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LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,     N.    J. 

Presented  by 


TV»e.  Wicp^cw"  cp-T  G^s.ov^o'e-  D^aqcmti  ^ 


9^ 


^^ 


BR   85    .B47    1908 

Best,  Nolan  Rice,  1871-1930 

Beyond  the  natural  order 


Beyond  the  Natural  Order 


Beyond  the  Natural  Order 


Essays  on  Prayer 
Miracles  and  the 
Incarnation    ^ 


By      / 

RICE    BE 


EMtor  of  "  The  Interior  " 


NOLAN 


ST 


New  York  Chicago         Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 


London 


AND 


Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1908,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New    York:      158    Fifth    Avenue 

Chicago:  80  Wabash  Avenue 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


TO    THE  WIFE 

Who   also   sat  beneath   the  evening 
la??ip  while  these  pages  were  written 


If  any  reader  asks  what  coordinating 
thought  lies  beneath  these  discon7tected 
essays^  suffer  the  author  to  propose  this  : 
God^  if  He  is  our  Father^  must  know 
His  children  personally  and  deal  with 
thetn  individually^  for  hnpersonal  and 
mass  relations  never  yet  were  fatherly. 


CONTENTS 


I.  The  Dynamics  of  Prayer 

II.  The  Rationalities  of  Prayer 

III.  The  Possibility  of  Miracle 

IV.  The  Probability  of  Miracles 

V.  The  Miracle  of  Jesus 


II 

35 
69 

93 
13 


I 

The  Dynamics  of  Prayer 


THE  DYNAMICS  OF  PRAYER 

The  prayer  problem  which  is  real  to  praying 
men  is  not  the  problem  that  speculative  philos- 
ophers debate,— how  the  will  of  God  may  be 
moved  by  the  petitions  of  His  creatures, — but  the 
profounder  moral  question  why  God  must  needs 
be  besought  at  all  in  behalf  of  any  good.     To 
require  a  man  to  ask  for  his  own  blessings  before 
they  are  given,  may  seem,  if  nothing  more,  an 
intelligible  way  of  impressing  a  beneficiary  with 
his  dependence ;  but  praying  for  one's  self  does 
not  fill  up  the  Bible  ideal  of  prayer.     Prayer  sub- 
tends also  a  great  arc  of  Scripture  altruism.     That 
believers  should  "  pray  one  for  another  "  is  the 
letter  of  apostolic  exhortation  and  the  spirit  of 
the  prayer-teaching  of  Christ.     The  duty  of  in- 
tercession is  emphasized  in  every  New  Testament 
epistle ;  the  example  of  it  abounds  in  the  biog- 
raphies of  our  Lord.     On  the  prayers  of  his  con- 
verts Paul  himself  relied  both  to  procure  him  "  a 
door  for  the  word  "  and  to  assure  him  the  grace 
to  "  speak  boldly  as  I  ought  to  speak."     He  even 
made  the   Christians  of  his  time  responsible  for 
the  conduct  of  the  pagan  governments    under 
which  they  lived ;  for  only  as  they  offered  "  sup- 
13 


14  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

plications,  prayers,  intercessions,  ...  for 
kings  and  all  that  are  in  high  place,"  did  the  apos- 
tle hope  for  them  to  obtain  that  justice  and  pub- 
lic order  under  which  they  could  enjoy  "  a  tran- 
quil and  quiet  hfe  in  all  godliness  and  gravity." 
And  not  even  these  large  uses  comprehended  in 
Paul's  faith  the  utmost  reach  of  prayer ;  looking 
beyond  all  his  knowledge  of  his  fellow  mortals  to 
the  very  horizons  of  his  imagination,  he  thought 
it  a  reasonable  and  useful  duty  to  pray  "  for  all 
men." 

If  prayer  is  to  be  to  the  Christian  only  an  ex- 
ercise by  rote,  its  formal  rituals  may  be  spread  to 
any  extent  of  words.  But  if  the  heart  essays  to 
invoke  all  good  on  all  mankind,  there  rise  forth- 
with distracting  questions  that  enervate  the  spirit 
of  prayer.  Why  should  I,  an  erring  mortal,  be 
found  beseeching  the  only  good  God  to  work 
good  in  the  world  ?  For  what  else  does  He  sit 
on  the  throne  of  creation  ?  Is  not  He  infinitely 
more  concerned  than  I  to  exalt  righteousness  on 
earth  ?  Will  He  have  neglected  aught  that  He 
might  have  done  for  true  rehgion's  sake ;  or  will 
my  puny  reminder  recall  Him  to  a  slighted  obli- 
gation? Are  not  missions  His  own  cause  in 
which  He  has  dispatched  His  chosen  agents  to 
the  remotest  lands,  and  has  He  now  so  forgotten 
them  that  I  should  beg  Him  to  prepare  them  "  a 
door  for  the  word"?  By  what  presumption 
shall  I  dare  to  intercede  for  men  and  women  far 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  15 

godlier  than  I,  who  have  already  intrusted  to  the 
Father  for  themselves  their  least  and  greatest 
concerns ;  will  He  wait  to  regard  their  pleas  until 
I  interpose  my  unworthier  petitions  ? 

In  such  perplexities  I  long  strove  to  content 
myself  with  the  reflection  that  altruistic  prayer  is 
certainly  a  cultivation  of  altruism,  and  may  be 
enjoined  for  that  purpose.  Without  dispute  it  is 
a  good  first  step  towards  loving  men  to  begin  to 
pray  for  them.  And  yet  this  is  not  sufficient  to 
satisfy.  Any  solely  subjective  explanation  of 
the  worth  of  prayer  gives  me  an  unpleasant 
sense  of  imputing  dishonesty  to  God.  That 
certain  very  considerable  reflex  values  accrue 
from  the  exercise  of  prayer  to  him  who  prays,  is 
reasonably  believable;  but  that  wholly  for  the 
sake  of  such  reactions  in  a  man's  own  life  God 
encourages  a  man  to  suppose  that  he  is  reaching 
divine  favour,  is  a  proposition  that  ultimately 
becomes  impossible.  It  attributes  to  God  an  un- 
candid  makeshift.  A  kindergarten  teacher,  in 
order  to  keep  the  children  interested  in  their 
calisthenics,  may  make  believe  with  them  that 
they  are  brave  knights  with  javelins ;  but  even 
though  we  be  children,  prayer  is  not  a  game. 
When  I  hear  the  voice  of  God  inciting  me  to 
pray  that  good  may  come  into  the  world,  I  must 
seriously  conceive  that  somehow  my  prayer  is 
capable  of  bringing  in  the  good.  Otherwise  I 
shall  not  pray. 


l6  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

It  was  out  of  a  verse  in  the  epistle  of  James 
that  there  first  flashed  on  me  a  suggestion 
towards  the  solving  of  this  puzzle.  The  unique 
rendering  of  our  modern  revisers  held  my 
attention  :  "  The  supplication  of  a  righteous  man 
availeth  much  in  its  working"  (J as.  5  :  i6).  The 
word  ^'  effectual "  in  the  version  long  accepted 
had  been  replaced  by  the  last  three  words  of  the 
revised  sentence, — "  in  its  working."  Even  my 
slight  acquaintance  with  the  original  could  on 
examination  make  out  the  necessity  which  com- 
pelled the  change.  No  mere  proleptic  adjective, 
duplicating  what  the  verb  "  avail  "  would  express 
without  it,  can  show  the  lively  and  aggressive 
force  of  the  Greek  participle  involved.  It  would 
endure  an  even  stronger  rendering  :  "  A  prayer 
toihng  earnestly  availeth  much."  I  trust  I  have 
learned  due  caution  about  loading  single  words 
of  Scripture  with  emphasis ;  the  Bible  writers  no 
more  than  other  earnest  men  stopped  to  weigh 
scruples  and  grams  of  philology.  And  yet  a 
diction  so  simple  and  straightforward  as  James 
uses  would  scarcely  employ  a  word  so  energetic 
about  prayer  unless  an  idea  of  active  energy  stood 
behind  it.  James  conceived  prayer,  it  would 
seem,  as  a  force  at  work.  And  why  should  I 
deny  the  validity  of  his  conception  ?  May  it  not 
be  true  in  literal  fact  that  supplication  is  a  deed  ? 
If  a  man  turns  his  hand  to  do  a  kindly  and  right- 
eous act  in  the  world,  I  say  he  works  for  God. 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  17 

If  he  strives  to  persuade  his  fellow  men  of  the  sal- 
vation which  is  in  Jesus  Christ,  I  say  he  works  for 
God.  Even  if  he  thinks  a  great  thought  and  tells 
it  for  men  to  think  after  him,  I  say  he  works  for 
God.     If  he  prays  for  men,  shall  I  call  him  idle? 

Perchance  prayer  is  not  after  all  a  petition  to 
move  the  will  of  God ;  perchance  it  is  a  power 
put  at  the  disposal  of  God  wherewith  to  move 
the  will  of  men.  Perhaps  praying  is  achievement. 
Physical  science  has  its  doctrine  of  the  conserva- 
tion of  energy, — at  this  moment  mayhap  set  in 
some  question  of  the  universality  assumed  for  it 
until  radium  was  known,  but  certainly  not  shaken 
from  any  great  area  of  its  sway  over  nature. 
Within  all  the  range  of  average  human  observa- 
tion it  still  remains  indisputable  that  kinetic  force 
is  nowhere  obtained  except  at  the  expense  of 
force  in  some  other  form.  The  consumption  of 
energy  is  the  only  creation  of  energy.  Work  is 
always  a  sort  of  combustion ;  results  prove  the 
eating  up  of  fuel.  Why  may  there  not  then  be 
in  the  spiritual  world  the  analogue  of  this  law  ? 
May  it  not  be  as  impossible  to  move  spiritual 
means  to  spiritual  effect  as  physical  means  to 
physical  effect  without  the  process  of  wear  which 
liberates  power?  And  may  not  prayer  be  the 
combustion  of  a  soul? 

This  suggestion  I  should  not  be  satisfied  to 
have  accepted  simply  as  a  graphic  metaphor.  It 
has  come  to  be  to  me  something  other  than  a 


l8  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

figure  of  rhetoric.     Power  is  no  more  a  metonomy 
in    the    realm   of   mind — perhaps  less— than  in 
the  realm  of  matter.     I  am  persuaded  that  the 
human  soul  in  the  act  of  passionate  willing  and 
wishing  is  a  Hving  dynamo.     It  is  conscious  with 
itself  of  the  forthputting  of  energy;  it  suffers 
afterwards  the  weary  reactions  of  toil.     The  man 
who  has  longed   mightily  for  great  success  or 
great  blessing  knows  that  "  virtue  "  has  gone  out 
of  him  thereby.     And  if  the  thing  wished  for  is 
within  the  scope  of  human  achievement,  one  may 
recognize  ocular  and  tangible  demonstration  that 
the  steadfast  purpose  of  the  mind  is  an  achieving 
power.     There  is  a  fiat  force  even  in  the  will  of 
finite    man.     But    when    the    wish  of  the  soul 
reaches    upward    to   the   things   which   human 
hands  are  impotent  to  mold,  shall  all  its  travail 
of  desire,  now  ennobled  by  aspirations  purer  and 
more  unselfish  than  in  lower  spheres,  lose  efficacy 
by  very  reason  of  its  loftier  spiritual  exaltation  ? 
If  a  small  longing  is  force  to  accomplish  the  pos- 
sible, can  a  great  longing  to  accomplish  the  im- 
possible have  no  force  at  all  ?     Is  there  no  law 
of  conservation  in  the  spiritual  world,— no  econ- 
omy to  gather  up  the  outraying  spiritual  energies 
of  men  and  employ  them  for  work  of  a  spiritual 
sort  ?     Surely  we  may  be  bold  to  say  that  such  a 
law  there  ought  to  be,  or  else  we  must  think  that 
the  God  who  amid  all  the  atomic  excitements  of 
suns,  planets,  satellites  and  star-dust  gathers  up 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  19 

the  fragments  of  dynamics  that  nothing  be  lost, 
has  somehow  betwixt  the  universe  of  the  tem- 
poral and  the  universe  of  the  eternal  forgotten 
His  divine  frugality. 

No,  there  is  a  conservation  of  spiritual  energy, 
and  the  law  of  it  is  the  law  of  prayer.  Prayer  is 
something  better  than  presenting  ourselves  in  the 
audience  chamber  of  God  and  suing  for  favour  in 
our  own  behalf  or  the  behalf  of  those  we  love. 
Prayer  is  summing  up  together  our  noblest  and 
ultimate  desires,  all  that  far  excess  of  longings 
which  are  beyond  any  capacity  of  ours  to  realize 
save  in  dreams,  and  bringing  all  these  hopes,  so 
futile  in  us,  to  the  throne  of  the  Omnipotent. 
Intrusted  with  the  sincere  aspirations  of  His  peo- 
ple, God  will  waste,  I  dare  believe,  not  so  much 
as  one  disheartened  sigh.  A  man's  first  soul-felt 
desires  for  "  the  profit  of  the  many  "  go  by  hon- 
est instinct  into  his  work,  wherein  it  is  his  high 
honour  to  be  "  God's  fellow  worker."  But  a 
good  man's  wish  for  better  things  in  an  improving 
world  very  soon  surpasses  all  his  most  zealous 
toil,  and  prayer  is  a  provision  for  banking  his 
overplus  with  God.  And  when  God  employs  an 
unselfish  human  wish  as  a  part  of  the  capital  of 
His  providence  and  so  fulfills  it,  a  greater  marvel 
has  come  to  pass,  for  God  appears  a  Fellow 
Worker  with  man.  The  Christian  pities  his 
neighbour,  and  works  the  pity  into  a  home-made, 
hand-turned    kindness.      Ere    long,    with    that 


20  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

benign  discipline,  his  enlarging  heart  has  begun 
to  pity  the  world — or  some  far-spread  section  of 
it.  But  he  cannot  be  kind  to  a  whole  world ;  is 
he  then  helpless?  How  shall  his  pity  avail? 
He  shall  pray,  says  his  Lord,  and  his  supplica- 
tion shall  "  avail  much  in  its  working," — working 
in  large  and  distant  places  where  the  man  could 
not  reach  to  work.  What  miracle  of  potentiality 
then  is  this  which  is  thus  conferred  on  creatures 
of  clay !  If  by  prayer  we  can  labour,  neither 
mountain  nor  chasm  of  difficulty  shall  be  able  to 
hinder  us.  We  are  at  the  end  of  our  own 
devices  ?  Doubtless  so.  But  we  are  not  defeated. 
It  has  simply  come  time  to  pray.  With  such  an 
enfranchisement  for  every  hope,  from  what  hope 
— from  what  aspiration — shall  "  height  or  depth 
or  any  other  creature  "  forbid  us  ? 

But  if  prayer  is  the  going  forth  of  energy  into 
the  spiritual  universe,  we  can  scarcely  escape 
acknowledging  that  much  of  what  we  call  prayer 
ill  deserves  to  be  known  by  that  name.  Our 
calm  and  urbane  petitions,  fiUing  their  modulated 
place  in  our  habitual  worship,  can  hardly  be  sus- 
pected of  being  ebullitions  of  vital  force.  Not 
that  I  would  seem  to  attribute  virtue  to  vehe- 
mence; we  are  not  supplicating  a  deaf  Baal. 
But  if  not  vehemence,  certainly  there  must  be 
intensity  in  the  voice  of  a  heart  that  it  is  putting 
itself  forth  for  the  world's  sake  in  a  passion  of 
Christly  good  will.     At  the  gateway  of  prayer  as 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  21 

at  every  other  gateway  to  the  capital  seat  of  the 
kingdom  "  men  of  violence  take  it  by  force." 
An  overmastering  wish  does  not  march  sedately 
down  the  smooth-laid  pavement  of  marble  words ; 
it  runs  and  cries  aloud.  There  are  no  hearts  of 
real  prayer  beating  in  our  bosoms  when  we  stand 
and  pray  thus  with  ourselves  :  "  It  would  gratify 
us  greatly,  O  Lord,  if  Thou  wert  pleased  to  bless 
everybody  in  general  very  agreeably."  Still  as 
of  ancient  times  the  ground  of  Peniel  is  beaten 
hard  with  the  feet  of  the  wrestlers. 

To  be  sure,  there  is  a  prayer  of  rest  and 
serenity,  and  it  has  its  sweet  and  efficient  place 
in  the  experience  of  the  devout.  When  we  com- 
mit to  our  loving  and  providential  Father  the 
issues  of  our  own  welfare  in  the  world,  no  stress 
of  soul  is  imposed  upon  us.  "  Your  Father 
knoweth  what  things  ye  have  need  of  before  ye 
ask  Him."  Just  the  gentle  truthful  word  which 
tells  Him  what  we  feel  of  our  want  of  Him  and 
how  we  throw  ourselves  upon  Him  for  all  our 
necessities, — the  quiet  whisper  which  speaks  in 
His  ear  our  confidence  that  according  to  His 
promise  He  will  not  forget, — these  outbreathings 
of  the  soul  at  peace  with  God  are  by  right  un- 
ruffled with  any  stir  of  the  intense,  active  emo- 
tions. In  every  case  of  his  own  fortunes  "  it  is 
good  that  a  man  should  hope  and  quietly  wait  for 
the  salvation  of  Jehovah."  Neither  for  bread 
nor  for  garments   do  the  trustful  need  to  beg ; 


22  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

only  to  say  we  are  looking  to  the  Father  for  them 
is  enough.  But  where  sin  is  involved — either  our 
own  sin  or  others' — and  stands  in  the  way  to  be 
conquered,  prayer  passes  from  a  breath  of  calm 
communion  to  an  implement  of  pitched  warfare, 
and  we  must  use  it  for  blows  struck  heavy  and 
hard.  Of  the  devils  in  ourselves  and  the  devils 
in  other  men,  it  is  ever  true  as  the  Master  said : 
*'  This  kind  can  come  out  by  nothing  save  by 
prayer." 

A  more  excitable  generation  going  before  our 
own  would  not  believe  that  men  and  women 
could  be  converted  to  the  way  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  except  as  with  weeping  and  wailing  they 
came  through  some  strenuous  agony  of  grief  at 
the  *^  mourners'  bench."  These  forefathers  were 
wrong,  of  course,  psychologically  and  religiously, 
in  supposing  that  the  spiritual  revolution  of  a  life 
can  be  effected  by  the  physical  simulation  of  any 
process  or  supposed  process  of  the  inner  nature. 
Yet  none  the  less  they  had  sight  of  a  great  soul 
fact  far  beyond  them,  and  their  error  was  greatly 
less  than  ours  if  we  imagine,  on  the  opposite 
hand,  that  a  few  placid  reflections  on  the  beauty 
of  goodness  can  set  a  man  free  from  his  habits 
of  sin.  The  exorcism  of  the  demons  is  by  prayer 
that  strains  the  sinews  of  the  soul, — not  by  some 
languorous  sentimental  expectation  that  God  will 
be  sorry  for  us,  seeing  that  we  are  not  near  as 
good  as  we  should  really  love  to  be.     When  head 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  23 

and  heart,  the  whole  man  is  in  fiery  revolt  against 
the  tyranny  of  evil,  and  life  has  become  one  ter- 
rific outcry  for  deliverance  from  "  the  body  of 
this  death,"  then  the  victory  is  at  hand.  But  the 
highway  that  leads  away  from  our  sins  towards 
God  is  forever  a  path  of  battle, — a  path  to  be 
traversed  only  with  prayer  at  every  step — all 
prayers  of  might  and  main.  And  the  battling 
prayer  availeth  much. 

It  is  not  different  when  we  undertake  to  pray 
our  friends  out  of  the  same  bondage.  We  may 
from  some  sanctimonious  sense  of  duty  keep  lists 
of  persons  within  our  acquaintance  who  are  not 
yet  Christians,  and  day  by  day  may  name  them 
over,  adding  punctiliously  with  each,  "  O  God, 
please  save  this  man,"  but  there  is  not  energy 
enough  in  the  whole  of  such  petitions  to  save 
one  of  them.  We  have  small  ground  to  take  any 
comfort  of  conscience  out  of  the  custom,  seeing 
what  meagre  results  come  from  it.  But  when 
some  day  the  horror  of  our  neighbour's  estrange- 
ment from  God,  the  despair  of  his  rebellion 
against  the  divine  rule,  the  desperation  of  his 
helplessness  in  the  teeth  of  sin,  all  rush  upon  us 
to  grip  our  own  throats  like  the  assault  of  furies 
in  the  dark,  then  we  begin  to  pray.  Then  we 
ourselves  feel  the  pall  fall  on  our  own  lives.  Then 
the  agonized  soul  of  sympathy  nerves  itself  to 
storm,  if  need  be,  the  uppermost,  innermost  cita- 
del of  heaven  ere  it  yields  its  vicarious  pleading 


24  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

for  the  sinner's  rescue.  And  then  the  fallen  be- 
gin to  be  saved.  The  mighty  prayer  of  love 
itself  becomes  dynamic;  it  lifts  men  from  the 
pit.  Its  very  earnestness  is  intrinsic  force,  and 
God  makes  that  force  efficient.  Men,  planning 
for  revivals,  ask  money  and  organization  for 
bringing  their  plans  to  pass ;  God  asks  only 
prayers.  He  can  have  a  revival  anywhere  if  He 
may  but  have  enough  prayers  of  the  right  kind 
to  work  with. 

So  with  all  manifold  forms  of  Christian  enter- 
prise,— whether  the  measures  and  methods  of  the 
local  church  or  the  cosmopolite  mission  agencies 
of  the  church  general, — prayer  is  the  secret  of 
motive  power  for  all  ahke.  The  only  successful 
type  of  Christian  enginery  which  God  has  at  work 
anywhere,  is  prayer-burning.  When  that  fuel 
fails,  the  machine  stands  still.  No  amount  or 
character  of  what  we  call  Christian  work  will  suf- 
fice as  a  substitute.  Work  is  indeed  of  itself  an 
obligation.  The  man  who  knows  what  to  do 
and  how  to  do,  ought  to  put  himself  with  great 
force  into  direct,  sinewy  toil.  But  not  with  all 
force ;  a  part  of  his  vital  energy  he  ought  always 
to  save  for  prayer.  When  from  our  days  of 
feverish,  anxious  effort  we  come  home  at  night 
too  tired  to  pray,  we  have  doubtless  defrauded 
God  of  a  part  of  His  resources  on  which  He  de- 
pended more  than  upon  our  active  deeds.  Our 
Father   appears  to  have   peculiar   need   of  our 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  25 

prayers  for  His  greater  purposes  in  the  world. 
There  are  some  objects  which  manifestly  He 
cannot  accompHsh  with  only  our  labour  in  hand. 
Our  planning  and  proclaiming  and  persuading  do 
not  reach  very  far  in  the  kingdom.  But  our 
prayers,  rising  beyond  what  we  see  and  handle  to 
all  that  we  long  for  and  dream  of,  sweep  in  their 
currents  of  force  round  the  outer  horizons  of  man- 
kind, and  in  God's  infinite  mechanics  may  serve 
for  immeasurable  results.  Busy  here  and  there, 
preoccupied  with  tangible  duties,  we  may  very 
possibly  be  doing  only  the  lesser  things,  while 
meanwhile  those  who  pray  affect  races  and  ages. 
Prayer,  one  can  well  imagine,  may  be  espe- 
cially useful  for  those  atmospheric  influences 
which  change  the  inclinations  of  communities. 
The  missionary  in  a  foreign  land,  may  labour  long 
and  with  painful  diHgence  to  gain  the  heed  of  his 
pagan  neighbours,  and  win  scarcely  casual  inter- 
est from  a  very  few.  Converts  he  probably  has 
none,  until  behind  the  scattered  impressions 
which  he  has  been  able  to  make  on  one  and  an- 
other by  personal  touch,  there  rises  mysteriously 
a  background  of  favourable  disposition  amidst 
the  populace  at  large.  A  better  air  prevails  ;  the 
missionary  can  speak  with  more  freedom,  more 
joy  and  more  hope,  and  ears  that  listen  begin  to 
reveal  hearts  that  receive.  He  realizes  the  subtle 
aid  which  buoyed  up  the  apostles  in  Jerusalem— 
"  favour  with  all  the  people."     The  worker  can- 


26  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

not  explain  what  has  come  to  pass  ;  he  knows 
it  is  no  new  power  which  he  has  acquired ;  he  can 
only  give  glory  to  God  for  providential  aid.  But 
no  doubt  if  we  could  trace  the  whole  chain  of 
cause  and  effect,  we  should  perceive  that  it  is  not 
a  blessing  wrought  without  means.  Back  in  the 
homeland  certain  devout  souls,  remembering  the 
missionary,  have  perchance  wished  for  him  a 
readier  acceptance  among  the  people  to  whom  he 
had  gone  out,  and  that  strong,  selfless  wish — that 
far-travelling  missionary  wish — they  have  told  to 
God.  It  is  not  for  mortals  to  surmise  how 
divinely  glad  the  Father  must  be,  knowing  well 
the  discouragements  of  that  servant  of  His,  to 
grasp  up  those  prayers  and  guide  them  hastily  to 
the  missionary's  succour.  And  when  enough 
such  loving  petitions  have  followed  and  lighted  on 
the  place,  all  the  air  around  will  grow  warm  and 
genial  with  the  lively  sympathy  of  hearts  that 
care — and  pray.  In  such  tropic  spiritual  climate 
the  vine  which  the  Lord's  hand  has  planted  can- 
not fail  to  flourish. 

Even  more  obvious  is  the  connection  between 
prayer  and  its  outgoing  spiritual  effects  in  the 
home  congregation.  Many  a  disheartened  minis- 
ter has  failed  with  woeful  monotony  in  one  attempt 
after  another  to  win  the  faithless  and  unbelieving 
of  his  town.  At  every  turn  adamant  barriers  de- 
fied his  most  assiduous  effort.  Men  with  whom 
he  argued  and  men  with  whom  he  pleaded  and 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  27 

men  with  whom  he  wept  aUke  resisted  his  minis- 
try. Then  suddenly  there  came  a  change.  His 
fellow  citizens  turned  tacitly  to  acknowledge  the 
importance  of  the  eternal  things ;  sneers  ceased, 
and  sinners  erstwhile  indifferent  were  moved  to 
consider  their  ways ;  some  ere  long  yielded  their 
lives  to  the  Saviour.  Here  too  the  minister  of 
God's  message  dared  not  account  anything  from 
himself  to  have  worked  the  difference.  But 
when  he  sought  in  quiet  places  for  the  clue,  he 
has  discovered  somebody  praying.  And  the 
prayers  had  wrought  the  revolution.  God  above 
was  never  uninterested  in  that  town  nor  ever 
careless  of  the  preacher's  unrewarded  struggles. 
But  nobody  had  afforded  the  overlooking  Lord 
enough  prayers  to  use  in  that  town,  and  it  had 
never  been  sanitated  of  its  sinful  miasmas. 
Prayers  rising  from  hearts  that  love  God  are  like 
the  salt  airs  that  rise  from  the  sea ;  they  carry 
healing  on  their  wings  wherever  the  breath  of 
heaven  blows  them.  Abundance  of  prayer  is  a 
charter  of  health  to  any  community. 

If  missionaries  in  heathen  lands  cannot  suc- 
ceed unprayed  for,  what  treason  to  our  brother- 
hood with  them  is  it  for  us  to  forget  and  leave 
them  unsupplied  with  this  essential  resource! 
If  the  minister  in  the  pulpit  of  the  home  church 
must  be  surrounded  with  prayers  before  he  is 
strong,  what  cruel  faithlessness  to  let  him  stand 
in  his  place  unshielded'  and  unsupported  !     For 


28  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

the  smallness  of  our  material  gifts  to  the  great 
causes  of  good  we  may  excuse  ourselves  by  our 
poverty  of  purse,  but  how  shall  we  excuse  our- 
selves for  our  penuriousness  of  prayer.  In 
wealth  of  praying  we  might  any  one  of  us  be 
millionaire  helpers, — if  we  but  seriously  put  our- 
selves to  the  trouble  of  it.  Grant  that  this  is  the 
true  working  wealth  of  evangelization  far  and 
near,  and  what  a  reversal  of  all  our  common 
standards  of  importance  at  once  ensues !  No 
longer  is  the  indispensable  strength  of  the  con- 
gregation in  the  dignified  elder  who  discourses 
of  profound  theology  in  the  week-night  prayer- 
meeting,  nor  in  the  adroit  trustee  who  contrives 
to  rescue  the  annual  balance  sheet  from  deficit, 
nor  yet  in  the  eloquent  pastor  whose  sermons  are 
the  praise  of  his  community.  But  the  person  on 
whom  the  success  of  the  church  most  radically 
depends  is  that  member  who  has  learned  to  pray, 
— not  as  a  dress-parade  evolution  in  open  meet- 
ing but  with  the  inevitable  outflowing  of  a  soul 
that  for  great  love  of  God  and  people  cannot 
contain  itself.  Most  likely  it  is  some  aged  saint, 
long  educated  in  the  spirit  and  long  practiced  in 
the  mystic  skill  of  prayer,  who  on  the  records  of 
heaven  is  written  down  as  the  most  important 
member  of  such  and  such  a  church.  Obscure  on 
earth,  the  giants  of  secret,  heart  prayer  are 
known  of  God,  His  greatest  Heutenants  no  doubt 
in  the  conquests  of  His  universal  kingdom. 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  29 

The  first  objection  to  this  teaching  may  readily 
be  anticipated.  It  will  be  said  that  the  doctrine 
makes  the  Creator  a  dependent  subordinate  of 
His  creatures,  bound  to  wait  their  interest  and 
will  for  permission  to  accomplish  His  intents, — 
even  beholden  for  resources  of  power  to  the 
finite  works  of  His  own  omnipotence.  It  is 
bootless  to  deny  the  contradiction,  but  the  con- 
tradiction is  no  disproof  while  as  great  a  paradox 
exists,  unexplained  but  undeniable,  in  the  mani- 
fest fact  that  God's  plans  linger  likewise  for  men's 
labour.  It  is  no  less  mystery  that  God  should 
abide  slow  and  reluctant  human  service  than  that 
He  should  abide  the  unfervent  sluggishness  of 
human  prayers.  Yet  the  centuries  are  witness 
that  He  will  have  no  other  method  of  bringing 
forward  His  kingdom  on  earth  than  the  en- 
deavours of  His  earthly  servants.  The  evangel 
which  He  might  have  summoned  quick  angels 
to  preach  in  every  land  ere  the  morning  of  His 
command  had  faded  to  its  night,  still  remains  in 
many  corners  of  the  inhabited  earth  an  unknown 
story,  because  the  Author  of  the  message  com- 
mits its  proclamation  only  to  an  unresponsive  and 
heavy-footed  race.  A  thousand  evident  purposes 
of  providence  remain  through  long  years  unful- 
filled because  no  man  cares  enough  to  lend  his  toil 
to  these  divine  objects.  A  sovereign  God  whose 
unaided  word  might  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye 
miraculously  perform  the  last  and   greatest  of 


30  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

'*  His  bright  designs,"  denies  Himself  the  hasty 
satisfaction  rather  than  take  back  to  Himself  an 
atom  of  the  work  He  has  laid  upon  men  to  do. 
And  it  is  only  another  Hke  marvel  of  inscrutable 
patience  if  He  has  also  bound  Himself  to  tarry 
from  His  purposed  consummations  until  the 
men  who  are  working  have  also  prayed.  The 
going  forth  of  the  missionary  is  no  more  an  out- 
putting  of  the  strength  of  the  church  than  is  the 
going  forth  of  a  fervent  prayer,  and  the  one  is 
no  more  needful  than  the  other. 

And  in  a  thorough  analysis  it  will  clearly  ap- 
pear that  to  teach  thus  is  not  to  teach  that  any 
one  has  limited  God,  nor  yet  to  attribute  power 
to  another  than  He.  The  very  essence  of  the 
principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy  in  the 
science  of  physics  consists  in  its  ultimate 
hypothesis — that  all  power  which  is  manifested 
in  mundane  phenomena  is  derived  more  or  less 
directly  from  the  sun.  The  reason  that  there  is 
a  certain  sum  of  force  in  the  world  neither  in- 
creased nor  diminished  in  its  constant  mutations, 
lies  alone  in  the  fact  that  the  great  solar  centre 
is  the  world's  only  producer  of  energy ;  energy 
can  come  from  nowhere  else.  So  too  this 
spiritual  parallel  implies  the  same  conception, — 
that  there  is  but  one  Source  of  the  power  of  the 
human  soul.  Far  beyond  the  political  sense  in 
which  Paul  used  the  expression,  it  is  true  in  a 
great  cosmic  sense :  "  There  is  no  power  but  of 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  31 

God."  The  Creator  does  not  abdicate  His  own 
omnipotence  when  He  invests  mankind  with 
prerogatives  of  directing  certain  forces  that 
radiate  from  Him ;  He  rather  sets  up  new  seats, 
new  viceroy alties,  of  His  sovereignty.  Men  rule 
in  His  name  and  stead  when  they  handle  the 
lightnings  by  His  laws  ;  they  do  no  more  when 
they  bring  things  to  pass  by  the  agency  of 
prayer.  And  if  the  Sovereign  endures  laxness 
in  those  who  fail  of  the  duty  which  He  commits 
to  their  charge,  it  is  but  another  phase  in  that 
strange  abstinence  from  His  own  liberty  by  which 
God  makes  any  human  liberty  possible.  This 
human  Hberty  may  indeed  stop  God's  work; 
that  half  of  the  reflection  is  staggering ;  but  the 
other  half  thereof  should  stir  a  true  man's  soul 
like  a  challenge  to  heroism  and  mighty  zeal,  for 
it  is  also  man's  possibility  to  make  God,  by  God's 
power,  triumphant. 

Explicit  qualifications  in  every  paragraph  have 
been  designed  to  avert  the  suspicion  that  some 
new  theory  of  occult  telepathy  is  being  here  in- 
culcated. It  is  not  meant  to  affirm — indeed,  it 
is  explicitly  meant  to  deny— that  prayer  effects 
anything  by  direct  impact.  Prayer  is  not  a 
vagrant  incantation  wandering  abroad  among 
men  to  lay  a  spell  where  it  may  chance  to  rest. 
True  prayer  is  directed  to  God,  and  to  God  it 
goes.  And  whatsoever  it  accomplishes  is  ac- 
complished because  God  "has  taken  hold  of  it  and 


32  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

guided  it  to  its  destined  result.  The  Father  is  a 
Master-  Worker  with  prayers  ;  He  knows  how  to 
get  the  most  out  of  them — how  to  turn  them  to 
the  best  advantage.  And  this  is  why  we  so  often 
do  more  by  praying  than  by  working.  Our 
endeavours,  no  matter  how  earnest,  we  often 
blunder  with,  not  knowing  in  what  place  to  put 
them  nor  how  to  fit  them  in  the  place  they 
should  go.  But  our  prayers  go  out  of  our  man- 
agement, and  God  neither  experiments  nor 
blunders  when  He  applies  their  force  direct  to 
the  point  of  first  need. 

To  ask  why  God  has  staked  the  progress  of 
good  among  men  on  the  precarious  contingency 
of  our  faithfulness  in  either  toil  or  prayer,  is 
pushing  far  into  the  arcana  of  the  divine  dis- 
cretions. We  could  accept  the  fact,  if  need  be, 
without  even  guessing  the  reason,  and  our 
nearest  explanation  will  hardly  be  more  than  a 
guess.  But  doubtless  the  use  of  responsibility 
in  developing  human  character  lies  somewhere 
close  to  the  centre  of  the  secret.  To  say  this  is 
not  to  hark  back  to  a  subjective  accounting  for 
the  power  of  prayer.  A  method  of  discipline 
is  very  different  from  a  mere  inspiring  suggestion 
to  the  mind.  If  God  employs  prayer  to  exercise 
character,  it  is  not  a  phantom  appearance  of  in- 
strumental good  on  which  he  relies,  but  an 
actual  tool  of  actual  service.  Had  the  Father  in 
heaven    provided    for    some    means    of    direct 


The  Dynamics  of  Prayer  33 

heavenly  appeal  to  human  souls  one  by  one, 
and  so  saved  them  with  no  brotherly  interven- 
tion of  other  men,  it  is  grievous  to  imagine  what 
a  selfish  and  slothful  company  of  the  pious  would 
compose  His  church  on  earth.  Taken  as  the 
condition  stands,  with  warning  on  every  page 
of  Scripture  and  in  every  day  of  experience  that 
our  neighbours'  spiritual  and  temporal  welfare 
depends  on  our  fidelity  of  Christian  service  to 
them,  the  church  yet  attains  no  great  distinction 
for  unselfishness.  What  would  be  its  heartless 
state  if  no  sense  of  responsibility  enlivened  its 
sympathy  and  care  for  the  sin-fraught  life  by 
which  it  is  surrounded  !  And  if  the  commission 
to  heal  the  wounds  of  the  world  and  to  preach 
in  the  world  the  glad  tidings  of  the  kingdom 
serves  at  all  to  rescue  Christian  hearts  from  the 
black  stigma  of  unbrotherly  isolation,  much  more 
should  the  commission  to  pray  for  the  world, 
if  seriously  received,  move  them  to  a  large  and 
divine  love  of  their  race.  For  we  may  render 
the  ministry  of  our  hands  only  to  a  very  few  who 
live  hard  by  our  own  dweUing  places,  and  very 
parochial  interests  may  go  with  exceeding  zeal, 
when  immediate  and  personal  labour  is  that  zeal's 
sole  expression.  But  God  is  not  parochial,  and 
He  will  not  have  us  abide  at  home  in  our  hearts. 
He  has  other  sheep  beyond  the  seas  whom  He 
would  fold  in  our  sympathies.  Therefore  He  sets 
us  a  task  of  prayer,  and  prayer  circles  the  world, 


34  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

and  coming  home  again  brings  back  our  unseen 
brothers  from  far  chmes  and  rude  nations.  Our 
prayers  are,  please  God,  a  blessing  to  them,  but 
not  to  them  alone,  for  "  God  hath  provided  some 
better  thing  concerning  us  that  apart  from  us 
they  should  not  be  made  perfect." 

Of  all  plights  into  which  men  can  fall  this  is 
the  saddest — to  have  nobody  to  pray  for  them. 
Well-mothered  boys  well  prayed  for  have  a  vast 
advantage  in  life,  but  what  wonder  is  it  that  un- 
prayed-for  boys  go  far  astray.  And  what  a 
divine  service  to  humanity  childless  and  lone 
women  may  render  if  they  will  but  take  into 
their  hearts  the  motherless  boys  to  pray  for 
them.  And  the  weary  shut-ins  who  so  often  call 
themselves  useless  and  only  a  burden, — they 
have  so  much  leisure  to  pray;  let  them  re- 
member with  sacrifices  of  loving  request  the 
many  for  whom  no  one  else  ever  thinks  to 
pray.  With  such  intercessions  those  who  have 
so  learned  Christ  may  save  untold  hosts  from 
the  awful  despair  of  believing  that  no  man  cares 
for  their  souls. 

A  godly  minister  whom  in  high  admiration 
I  venture  to  call  friend  has  written  of  intercessory 
prayer  as  "  A  Mighty  Means  of  Usefulness," 
And  such  most  truly  it  is, 


II 

The  Rationalities  of  Prayer 


II 

THE  RATIONALITIES  OF  PRAYER 

Though  the  question  of  the  possibility  of 
divine  answer  to  human  petition,  which  was  de- 
liberately passed  by  at  the  outset  of  the  fore- 
going chapter,  is,  as  was  there  insisted,  seldom  a 
disturbing  problem  to  a  man  of  vital  prayer  ex- 
perience, it  is  one  of  the  earliest  riddles  advanced 
by  the  disputatious  agnostic,  and  is  doubtless 
an  actual  stumbling-block  to  some  who  crave 
the  consolations  of  the  faith  from  which  this 
difficulty  seems  to  debar  them.  There  are,  there- 
fore, times  when  by  one  circumstance  or  another 
the  Christian  is  challenged  to  give  a  reason  for 
the  confidence  with  which  he  offers  his  suppli- 
cations, and  as  forearming  him  against  that  de- 
mand, some  inquiry  is  justified  into  the  ration- 
ality of  trusting  a  "  prayer-hearing  and  prayer- 
answering  God."  The  discussion  is  not  a  scrip- 
tural one;  what  the  Scriptures  teach  is  plain 
enough ;  the  question  here  is  whether  that 
teaching  is  agreeable  to  reason. 

Those  who  deny  fortify  themselves  with  three 
characters  of  argument.  It  is  alleged,  in  the  first 
place,  that  the  **  reign  of  law  "  in  the  universe  ex- 
37 


38  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

eludes  the  vacillation  of  a  God  who  could  be 
swayed  by  "  whims,"  either  His  own  or  those  of 
His  favourites  among  men.  Others,  perhaps  more 
devout,  stand  upon  the  insistence  that  an  om- 
niscient and  all-benevolent  Father  has  beforehand 
chosen  what  is  best  for  each  of  His  creatures, 
and  if  prayers  might  induce  Him  to  change,  it 
would  necessarily  be  a  change  to  some  worse 
thing.  On  a  third  part  it  is  contended  that  God's 
plans  are  comprehensive  of  the  whole  of  man- 
kind, insuring  the  highest  good  of  the  race 
en  masse,  but  that  it  is  idle  to  imagine  that  among 
the  innumerable  multitudes  of  men  He  can  give 
specific  heed  to  desires  of  individuals.  Of  these 
objections,  the  first  is  academic,  the  second  me- 
chanical, the  third  unimaginative. 

The  antagonism  between  law  and  prayer  is 
created  by  exaggerating  both  ideas.  The  mod- 
ern pride  over  discovering  coordination  in  nature 
has  made  of  modern  thinkers  a  cult  of  law-wor- 
shippers. To  hear  their  sweeping  syllogisms 
one  would  imagine  that  a  new  race  of  divinities, 
by  family  name  called  the  laws  of  nature,  had 
established  an  absolute  autocracy  over  the  uni- 
verse, in  the  grasp  of  which  even  the  Creator 
Himself  is  a  rule-ridden  slave.  Such  a  mode  of 
speech  either  voices  a  wholly  material  pantheism, 
or  else  evinces  indiscrimination  of  the  various 
manners  of  God's  action,  which  are  summed  up 
under  this  term — the  laws  of  nature.     Undoubt- 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  39 

edly  many  of  the  great  facts  which  mankind 
sees  in  creation  the  same  from  age  to  age  are 
structural  and  in  that  sense  necessary ;  they  must 
be  as  they  are  or  the  universe  would  be  some- 
thing other  than  it  is.  Gravitation  may  fairly  be 
said  to  be  inevitable;  human  thought  at  least 
could  not  imagine  its  absence  or  its  negative  in 
a  system  of  physical  existence.  So  with  the  laws 
of  morals ;  right  is  right  and  wrong  is  wrong,  as 
immutably  to  God  as  to  man,  and  the  question 
of  the  patriarch,  "  Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth  do  right  ?  "  represents  to  the  modern  heart 
as  to  the  ancient  the  primal  necessity  apart  from 
which  there  may  be  no  theistic  faith.  It  may 
raise  an  insurmountable  paradox  to  the  reason  to 
speak  of  God  as  obliged  to  do  anything,  but  the 
instinct  of  conscience  declares  that  He  is  obliged 
to  be  just,  true  and  benevolent,  and  will  not  en- 
dure to  have  it  otherwise.  There  can  be  no 
variation  in  the  morality  of  God. 

To  this  extent  God's  laws  are  changeless. 
But  prayer  does  not  come  into  conflict  with 
either  of  these  categories  in  His  statutes.  No 
man  prays  God  to  suspend  the  interplanetary  at- 
tractions or  to  alter  the  colour  composition  of 
light.  And  no  man  wittingly  desires  God  to  do 
an  evil  thing.  The  requests  of  intelligent  prayer 
are  requests  for  what  the  suppliant  at  least  be- 
lieves to  be  within  the  lawful  right  of  God  to 
grant,  without  infringing  on  any  of  the  estab- 


40  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

lished  principles  of  natural  order  or  working  any 
form  of  injustice  to  any.  God's  orator — to  hark 
back  to  the  old  meaning  of  the  word  which  now 
sounds  so  quaint — may  be  far  astray  in  judgment 
as  to  the  possibility  of  the  thing  he  asks  for ;  it 
may  involve  impossible  consequences,  of  which 
his  hmited  human  sight  has  afforded  him  no  sus- 
picion ;  but  his  error  of  estimation  in  that  par- 
ticular does  not  destroy  the  general  validity  of 
his  trust.  He  is  right  in  refusing  to  believe  that 
red  tape  of  eternal  precedents  ties  down  the 
Governor  of  creation  from  doing  yet  and  now 
what  He  will  with  His  own.  The  heavenly 
Father  is  not  a  petrified  Spirit  whose  choice  and 
volition  were  exhausted  in  deciding  on  pre-crea- 
tion  decrees  aeons  ago.  He  saves  to  Himself,  and 
day  by  day  enjoys,  that  liberty  which  energetic 
men  count  the  first  condition  of  success — the 
liberty  to  meet  with  new  means  the  demands  of 
new  circumstances.  And  to  God  the  new  cir- 
cumstances may  very  likely  be  new  prayers  for 
new  blessings, — for  God  knows  too  well  what 
prayers  mean  to  treat  them  as  negligible  factors 
of  any  situation.  Those  laws  of  nature  or  the 
spiritual  realm  which  are  simply  men's  notations 
of  God's  habits,  are  not  of  any  binding  moral 
force  upon  Him ;  He  determined  the  habit,  and 
He  may  desert  it,  when  He  will,  for  another  habit 
equally  righteous.  It  is  mere  play  upon  words 
to  call  it  law-breaking  for  Him  thus  to  change  His 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  41 

method.     And  the  beneficiaries  of  such  changes 
may  rightly  be  those  who  pray. 

The  relation  of  God  to  law  in  His  universe 
may  be  illustrated  in  a  homely  analogy  by  a 
merchant's  conduct  of  his  business.  Entering 
upon  any  commercial  enterprise,  the  manager  of 
affairs  draws  up  a  body  of  regulations  for  the 
conduct  of  trade.  Some  of  these  rules  are  de- 
termined by  moral  considerations,  some  by  ac- 
cepted principles  of  sound  merchandising  and 
finance,  some  by  respect  to  local  expediencies, 
and  some  by  the  mere  need  of  having  a  uniform 
practice  throughout  the  establishment.  The 
chief,  for  discipline's  sake,  must  require  all  his 
subordinates  to  obey  all  the  regulations  without 
discrimination,  but  he  would  be  exceedingly 
fatuous  if  he  left  no  freedom  of  exceptions  to 
himself.  To  certain  of  his  own  laws  he  is  indeed 
as  firmly  bound  as  the  least  of  his  employees  ; 
he  cannot  honourably  suspend  the  rule  of  honesty 
nor  the  rule  of  courtesy, — they  have  the  moral 
sanction  which  no  shifts  of  condition  may  alter. 
He  will-  have  no  desire  to  suspend  the  rule 
prescribing  dignified  advertising  measures,  for 
these  are  involved  in  the  fixed  character  of  the 
business.  But  the  usual  time  of  paying  wages 
may  in  holiday  week  be  advanced  for  a  day  or 
two  or  three  in  order  to  supply  employees  the 
sooner  with  their  Christmas  money,  because  this 
is    no   matter   of  principle   but  a  rule  of  con- 


42  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

venience,  and  for  convenience  or  kindness  may 
be  altered.  So,  for  another  instance,  the  require- 
ment of  cash  payment  may  be  waived  when  a 
charitable  institution  with  an  empty  treasury 
needs  emergency  supplies.  A  manager  who 
cannot  make  exceptions  is  to  be  pitied;  he 
needs  a  steel  heart.  There  is  nothing  more 
cruel  than  an  inflexible  rule;  somewhere  it  is 
sure  to  run  over  human  rights  and  the  instincts 
of  brotherhood  like  a  juggernaut.  No  kind  man 
would  ride  such  an  uncontrollable  machine. 

Nor  will  God.  It  may  seem  gross  to  lay  such 
a  commonplace  illustration  parallel  to  the  divine 
management  of  the  world,  but  its  plainness  of 
meaning  will  atone  for  that.  God,  like  a  stable 
business  man,  has  His  fundamental  rules  which 
He  will  not,  cannot,  on  any  consideration,  set 
aside.  These  are  the  rules  which  insure  the 
continuance  of  nature  and  morality.  But  He 
has  too  His  incidental  rules,  His  nominal  customs, 
which  prevail  in  the  absence  of  reason  for  some- 
thing other,  but  from  which  He  may  at  choice 
make  exception, — as  men  would  say,  "  to  favour 
a  friend."  And  the  foundations  are  not  unsettled 
when  in  such  indulgent  preference  He  answers  a 
personal  prayer  with  a  personal  blessing.  If  for 
his  own  prayer  and  the  prayer  of  his  friends 
some  sick  Hezekiah  is  reprieved  from  immediate 
death  and  granted  fifteen  years  of  added  life, 
nothing  has  happened  except  a  gracious  kind- 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  43 

ness  to  one  family,  of  which  the  consequences 
are  not  at  conflict  with  any  larger  purposes  of 
God.  It  is  idle  rhetoric  to  insist  that  such  a 
change  from  what  would  otherwise  have  been, 
makes  it  impossible  to  suppose  that  God  cherishes 
fixed  plans  of  action.  Fifteen  years  of  Hezekiah, 
living  or  dead,  do  not  deflect  history.  Or  if  in 
case  of  straits  a  hard-working  farmer  prays  for 
prosperity,  it  does  not  require  that  the  science  of 
meteorology  must  be  undone  in  order  to  afford 
him  a  timely  rain  on  a  well  tilled  field.  Indeed 
he  can  get  that  sort  of  answer  only  by  means  of 
the  laws  of  meteorology  specially  brought  to  bear 
on  his  need, — which  is  no  more  lawless  than  to 
take  the  rule  of  three  out  from  among  the  set 
"  examples "  in  the  arithmetic  text-book  and 
apply  it  to  a  problem  arisen  in  the  actual  course 
of  trade. 

It  is  impossible,  as  it  is  needless,  to  go  on  to 
illustrate  this  point  by  all  the  different  kinds  of 
petition  that  men  are  prompted  to  offer.  The 
purpose  is  by  meagre  allusion  simply  to  indicate 
how  wide  the  area  in  which  there  are  at  least  no 
structural  reasons  why  God  should  not  answer 
prayer.  It  is  granted  that  prayer  cannot  prevent 
the  sun  from  rising  in  the  morning,  for  the  sun 
always  does  rise,  and  the  presumption  is  that  it 
must  needs  do  so.  But  it  is  not  granted  that  the 
prayer  of  sailors  for  the  abatement  of  a  storm 
is  by  necessity  futile,  for  storms  do  abate,  and  if 


44  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

God  lives  at  all  in  His  world,  He  must  know  a 
way  of  abating  storms  and  must  have  a  discre- 
tion in  using  that  means.  The  centenarian  may 
not  pray  to  Hve  to  be  two  hundred  years  old,  for 
there  is  an  evident  law  against  the  extension  of 
human  life  to  two  centuries.  But  the  growing 
lad  may  pray  to  reach  manhood,  for  boys  do 
come  to  manhood.  Where  it  is  reasonable  to 
wish,  it  is  reasonable  to  pray,  for  a  prayer  is 
simply  a  wish  based  on  theistic  faith.  There  is 
nothing  but  empty  bombast  of  words  in  declar- 
ing that  infrangible  law  governs  every  deed  of 
God ;  neither  our  experience  of  the  variety  of 
nature  nor  our  experience  of  the  liberty  of  per- 
sonality in  ourselves  justifies  such  generalization. 
The  ideal  of  pervasive  law  in  the  universe  is  a 
lofty  thought,  an  enlargement  for  the  mind  it 
enters.  But  its  nobility  is  forfeited  when  it 
grows  so  overbold  as  to  try  to  put  divinity  in 
shackles.  God's  universe  is  orderly  but  not 
order-hampered.  The  broad  current  of  His 
plans  runs  in  a  channel,  not  in  a  groove.  All 
is  lawful  but  not  all  is  law. 

It  is  still  further  beside  the  mark  to  charge  God 
with  whims  if  He  shall  choose  to  regard  the  peti- 
tions of  men  and  consent  to  some  of  them.  It  is 
not  represented  on  the  part  of  any  who  believe 
in  prayer  that  prayer  is  a  compulsion  on  God. 
His  Bible  promises  to  answer  those  who  call  upon 
Him,  in  no  wise  bear  the  construction  of  con- 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  45 

tracts  to  do  all  that  may  be  asked.  Prayer  is  not 
a  secret  spring  by  which  every  comer  advised  in 
the  sleight  of  it  may  force  open  the  treasure-box 
of  creation  and  help  himself  as  he  will.  Nor  yet 
is  it  a  requisition  to  be  filled  on  sight  according 
to  the  terms  of  demand.  It  is  instead  a  humble 
petition  presented  to  a  just  and  discriminating 
Judge,  who  grants  only  so  much  as  His  own 
wisdom  approves  as  of  benefit  to  the  petitioner. 
The  will  of  the  supplicant  has  absolutely  no  con- 
straining influence  on  the  will  of  the  great  An- 
swerer,— as  was  submissively  recognized  by  the 
best  Praying  Man  who  ever  lived,  the  one  whom 
we  should  have  thought  entitled  to  require  just 
what  He  desired.  And  on  God's  part  there  is 
not  the  least  suggestion  that  "  whim  "  enters  into 
the  prayer  interchange ;  His  responses  are  not 
arbitrary  but  undoubtedly  upon  principle  that 
looks  on  the  one  hand  to  the  large  rights  of  hu- 
manity, and  on  the  other  to  the  ultimate  welfare 
of  the  individual  soul  that  entreats  favour.  It 
may  well  be  believed  that  in  heaven  the  privilege 
of  prayer  is  considered  a  critically  important 
franchise  for  humanity,  and  as  such  is  guarded 
from  abuse  with  the  most  jealous  care.  Even 
good  men  must  be  watched  lest  they  employ 
their  access  to  the  audience  chamber  of  the  King 
for  the  advance  of  selfish  objects.  Perhaps  no 
prayer  is  ever  granted  for  a  purely  personal  bless- 
ing.    Health  is  granted  to  a  man,  not  so  much 


46  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

for  his  own  sake,  but  because  he  may,  if  he  will, 
use  his  strength  to  make  others  happy.  A  man 
is  given  a  happy  home,  not  to  enjoy  in  his  own 
life  merely,  but  because  a  happy  home  can  be 
made  the  centre  of  some  of  the  truest  outgoing 
social  influences.  So  praying  for  one's  self  is 
not  a  purely  individualistic  exercise  when  we  get 
into  the  final  analysis  of  it ;  it  chimes  in  with  the 
music  of  the  farthest  spheres. 

The  argument  that  the  Father  has  already 
chosen  the  best  course  of  hfe  for  every  creature 
of  His,  and  that  therefore  a  grant  of  requests 
offered  in  prayer  is  not  only  impossible,  but 
would  involve,  if  possible,  a  descent  from  God's 
ideal  to  some  worse  thing  preferred  only  by  hu- 
man ignorance,  is  likewise  a  fallacy  produced  by 
overstretching  truth.  It  is  a  precious  and  beauti- 
ful faith  that,  as  Dr.  Bushnell  delighted  to  preach, 
"  every  man's  life  is  a  plan  of  God."  We  are  not 
cast  into  this  world  at  random  for  fit  or  misfit,  as 
may  chance.  By  divine  forethought  each  soul  is 
undoubtedly  adapted  to  occupy  a  certain  exact 
place  in  the  organization  of  history,  and  while  for 
sake  of  sacred  human  liberty  the  soul  is  permitted 
choice  whether  it  will  or  will  not  discharge  its 
destiny,  yet  the  constraint  of  adaptations  and  en- 
vironments is  so  strong  that  most  men  are  proba- 
bly to  be  found  in  approximately  the  places  in 
the  world  for  which  God  intended  them.  Never- 
theless as  the  prevalence  of  law  fixing  the  main 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  47 

course  of  nature  does  not  imply  the  fixing  of 
every  natural  incident,  so  the  marking  out  of  a 
great  ultimate  usefulness  for  any  one  life  does  not 
needfully  include  at  the  same  time  the  determina- 
tion of  all  the  intermediate  experiences  through 
which  the  life  is  to  realize  its  appointment.  It 
may  be  that  A  has  been  set  apart  in  the  counsels 
of  providence  to  accomplish  some  great  social 
reform,  but  until  A  has  proved  what  manner  of 
man  he  is,  it  may  yet  remain  an  open  question 
whether  he  is  to  achieve  his  great  deed  in  sore 
personal  chastisement  after  tedious  delay,  or  with 
joy  and  speedy  triumphing.  If  A  is  headstrong 
and  self-reliant,  it  may  be  impossible  to  grant  his 
prayers  for  quick  success;  it  might  ruin  him. 
But  if  he  is  a  humble  man,  trusting  solely  in  the 
aid  of  God,  and  his  prayers  attest  his  character, 
God  may  be  able  to  meet  his  petitions  with  vic- 
tory ere  they  have  fairly  risen  from  the  warm 
altar  of  his  lips. 

To  say  that  for  a  praying  man  God  can  do  no 
more  than  He  could  do — and  would  do — by  gen- 
eral benevolence  for  the  same  man  if  he  did  not 
pray,  ignores  the  merit  in  the  act  and  attitude  of 
prayer.  Any  discreet  earthly  father  should  be 
able  to  understand  how  it  is  that  more  can  be 
done  in  the  home  for  the  child  who  modestly  and 
submissively  asks  kindnesses  and  is  grateful  on 
receiving  them,  than  for  either  the  child  who  is 
indifferent  to  loving  gifts  or  the  child  who  im- 


48  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

pudently  demands  favours  as  his  pampered  right. 
So  what  God  may  do  for  men  depends  very 
greatly  on  how  men  treat  God.  His  will  to  be 
kind  is  the  same  towards  each  of  His  children ; 
His  chance  to  be  kind  is  in  different  cases  very 
different.  Blessings  at  best  are  dangerous  things, 
and  those  which  are  unsolicited  are  most  apt  to 
be  to  the  hurt  of  the  recipient.  It  is  a  frequent 
theme  of  the  Bible  writers — and  where  else  are 
there  so  shrewd  analyzers  of  human  nature  ? — how 
Jeshurun  kicks  when  he  has  waxed  fat.  When 
the  ground  of  a  certain  rich  man  brought  forth 
plentifully,  so  that  he  had  to  pull  down  his  barns 
and  build  greater,  the  bounty  of  the  earth  evoked 
no  thought  of  God ;  it  was  a  Voice  wholly  strange 
to  him  which  that  night  called  his  soul.  If  there- 
fore the  common  provisions  of  nature — the  kind- 
nesses of  simple  prosperity  and  health — exalt  the 
proud  hearts  of  men  to  self-sufficiency  and  re- 
bellion, God  would  scarcely  dare  to  confer  on  a 
prayerless  man  the  choicest  mercies  that  his 
yearnings  of  love  could  devise. 

But  if  the  man  should  somehow  be  brought  to 
turn  his  mind  back  to  heaven  and  pray,  how 
gladly  must  the  Father  see  the  conversion  of 
heart  which  makes  possible  a  larger  indulgence 
of  His  kind  desires  towards  another  child.  For 
by  coming  with  a  petition  the  man  confesses 
himself  a  dependent,  abdicating  his  vain  preten- 
sions to  win  his  own  place  and  provide  his  own 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  49 

way  in  life.  Now  if  he  receives  special  and  un- 
usual mercy,  he  may  perhaps  be  trusted  not  to 
"  glory  as  if  he  had  not  received  it."  Now  the 
answer  of  his  best  hopes  may  not  plume  him 
with  such  eclat  that  he  shall  forget  the  depend- 
ence which  his  prayer  confessed.  Now  he  may 
remember  to  be  grateful ;  now  he  may  not,  in 
proud  satisfaction,  tear  himself  from  the  leader- 
ship of  the  Hand  that  has  blessed  him.  With  a 
praying  man  there  is  hope  that  great  mercy  may 
not  be  ruinous.  But  towards  the  many,  irrev- 
erent and  contumacious,  God  must  restrain  Him- 
self, lest  by  giving  to  the  utmost  of  His  divine 
impulses  He  might  further  harden  the  hearts  of 
the  thankless,  as  children  are  spoiled  by  the  un- 
reckoning  indulgence  of  too  complacent  parents. 
Yet  all  that  we  know  of  the  Father  above  per- 
suades us  that  beyond  all  else  He  rejoices  in  be- 
ing good — munificently  good — to  men.  Is  it 
then  of  sound  reason  to  believe  that  by  some 
predestinarian  Hmitation  He  would  tie  Himself 
down  to  do  no  more  for  the  son  come  humbly 
home  to  the  Father's  house  than  He  may  venture 
to  do  for  the  same  son  living  the  prodigal  life  in 
a  far  land?  He  would  surely  leave  Himself  the 
right  to  enrich  the  soul  that  bows  and  worships 
with  at  least  all  those  mercies  that  He  longed  to 
give,  but  dared  not,  while  in  vainglory  of  unre- 
pentant sin  the  soul  would  have  nothing  of  Him. 
It  would  be  an  unjust  heaven  which  could  do 


50  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

nothing  more  for  the  man  of  prayer  than  for  the 
man  who  will  not  even  draw  near  to  the  door  of 
supplication  to  read  the  promise  of  its  open  por- 
tals. 

God  then  will  show  mercy  to  the  prayerless, 
but  to  the  praying  He  will,  as  He  can,  show 
greater  mercy.  In  this  case  the  alternative  of 
good  is  not  evil  but  greater  good.  The  sup- 
pliant is  not  complaining  of  the  portion  allotted 
him  in  the  general  ordering  of  human  affairs  ; 
but  he  puts  himself  in  willing  personal  relation 
to  do  still  larger  things  for  God,  and  if  it  be  the 
divine  will,  to  enjoy  higher  things  from  God.  It 
is  true  enough  that  in  prayer — so  short  is  our 
earth-seeing  sight — we  often  ask  for  things  that 
are  ill  for  us,  and  no  real  blessings  at  all.  But 
this  observation  only  requires  it  to  be  said  again 
that  there  is  no  contract  basis  for  prayer ;  God  is 
free  to  refuse.  And  whoever  prays  in  any  wis- 
dom at  all  implies  with  whatever  he  asks  the 
qualifying  petition  that  God  may  consider  his  de- 
sires and  allow  only  what  in  the  long  account 
may  be  for  his  welfare.  Prayer  is  only  danger- 
ous when  pressed  headstrongly ;  of  such  prayer 
the  sufficient  punishment  may  be  its  grant  in 
full,  bringing  that  sombre  irony  of  prosperous 
fortune  depicted  by  the  psalmist : 

"  He  gave  them  their  request, 
But  sent  leanness  into  their  soul." 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  51 

But  from  his  spiritual  tragedy — poverty  in 
wealth — it  requires  only  a  simple  and  submissive 
heart  to  save  a  devout  man.  To  ask  the  best 
the  heart  prompts ;  to  receive  the  kindest  God 
prepares, — this  is  the  noble  commerce  of  prayer. 
In  these  paragraphs  I  am  perfectly  aware  that 
"  I  speak  after  the  manner  of  men."  Back  of 
this  whole  discussion  remains  unanswered  the 
logical  question  :  How  may  anything  that  God 
foreknows  be  treated  as  contingent?  May  we 
speak  of  His  doing  better  or  worse  for  a  man  ac- 
cording to  whether  or  not  the  man  prays  ?  Does 
not  God  well  know  what  He  will  do,  and  does 
not  that  knowledge  shut  up  the  man  to  the  atti- 
tude which  is  antecedent  to  God's  foreseen 
course  ?  In  answer  I  can  only  appeal  once  more 
to  the  native  sense  of  personality  which  abides 
in  every  man's  mind  till  excess  of  logic  obscures 
it.  By  all  our  experience,  observational  and  sub- 
jective, the  finest  type  of  human  person  is  con- 
strained to  follow  righteousness  and  constrained 
to  keep  law,  but  in  decisions  of  expediency  and 
in  adaptations  of  means  to  ends  is  unconstrained 
and  self-willing.  And  it  is  the  natural  naive  in- 
stinct of  the  human  heart  to  attribute  to  the 
God  of  heaven  the  best  things  that  it  perceives 
in  the  qualities  of  great  and  good  men.  The 
teaching  of  Jesus,  especially  as  regards  the  divine 
Fatherhood,  justifies  the  instinct.  It  is  indeed  a 
noteworthy  sign  of  how  truly  the  Bible  is  a  book 


52  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

of  life  and  not  of  philosophy,  that  it  is  so  human 
in  its  representation  of  God — so  anthropomorphic, 
if  you  will.  No  trace  appears  there  of  this 
metaphysical  puzzle  over  the  necessary  prede- 
terminations of  Omniscience.  The  primitive 
portions  of  the  book  calmly  represent  God  as 
changing  His  mind  even  to  the  extent  of  re- 
penting for  past  actions  ;  and  when  the  reader 
has  advanced  to  the  passages  most  intellectually 
refined,  he  still  finds  Paul,  the  very  indoctrinator 
of  predestination,  bidding  his  Gentile  converts 
beware  lest  the  Power  that  grafted  them  into 
the  gospel  tree  might  for  unbelief  cut  them  off 
again,  and  fearing  for  himself  that  his  Redeemer 
may  in  the  end  of  all  judge  him  not  worth 
saving. 

Doubt  of  God's  ability  to  attend  to  each  of 
His  creatures  on  earth  individual  by  individual  is, 
on  the  other  hand,  an  induction  from  human 
personality  to  divine  personality  which  quite 
misleads.  It  is  an  argument  not  from  man's 
highest  possibilities  but  from  one  of  his  narrowest 
limitations.  This  is  a  faculty  soon  exhausted 
with  us — the  power  of  holding  in  eye  or  mind 
separately  the  units  of  a  mass.  The  eye  may 
see  a  group  of  eight  or  ten  as  so  many  persons ; 
after  that  it  takes  them  in  as  a  company  unless 
they  are  separated  by  a  laborious  process  of 
counting.  And  the  mind  of  the  average  man 
finds  it  difficult  to  form  and  keep  distinct  im- 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  53 

pressions  of  all  the  several  members  of  a  school, 
society  or  congregation  after  the  number  has 
risen  much  above  a  hundred.  Even  in  a  com- 
munity where  he  has  lived  long  and  has  abundant 
social  fellowships  with  his  neighbours,  the  ordinary 
citizen  would  nothkely  call  more  than  a  thousand 
men  acquaintances, — many  fewer  friends.  And 
it  is  because  we  have  these  experiences  of  our 
own  to  suggest  the  difficulty  of  individualizing 
even  a  few  out  of  the  great  gray  conglomerate  of 
human  life  which  walls  us  in,  that  we  disbelieve 
the  heavenly  Father's  discriminate  knowledge 
of  the  billion  and  a  half  atoms  in  the  aggregate 
of  the  race.  But  it  is  a  disbelief  that  will  not 
endure  analysis  ;  it  comes  to  be  trivial  and  almost 
ridiculous  when  we  realize  that  we  are  making 
out  a  thing  impossible  to  God  just  because  it  is 
staggering  to  us.  We  do  not  so  hamper  the 
greatest  men  among  us  ;  we  admire  and  applaud 
those  whose  extraordinary  capacity  for  details 
accomplishes  feats  of  management  that  we  ac- 
knowledge impossible  for  ourselves ;  or  to  take 
the  very  case  that  we  are  here  considering, — it 
is  the  topic  of  comment  in  the  life  of  almost 
every  famous  statesman  that  he  had  a  marvellous 
gift  for  accumulating  and  remembering  acquaint- 
ances. If  these  lines  of  enlarging  faculty  run  on 
out  beyond  the  best  abilities  of  the  world  of  men 
as  known  to  men,  by  what  human  compasses 
shall  their  arc  be  spanned  when  they  have  come 


54  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

to  infinity  ?  Measure  the  distance  from  the  most 
ambitious  human  mechanics  to  the  mechanism 
of  the  starry  heavens, — from  the  administration 
of  the  vastest  human  plans  to  the  ordering  of 
that  divine  plan  which  covers  eternal  history, — 
and  say  whether  these  are  any  lesser  distance 
than  from  the  acquaintanceship  of  men  with  their 
friends  to  the  acquaintanceship  of  God  with  His 
hosts  of  earthly  charges  from  pole  to  pole  and 
the  world  around.  If  we  consent  to  infinity,  let 
us  not  deny  infinitude. 

The  ideal  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  has  a 
singular  appeal  to  the  human  heart — an  appeal 
that  even  agnostics  are  fain  to  acknowledge. 
But  it  is  very  clear  that  there  is  no  Fatherhood 
in  the  universe  unless  this  individual  dealing  of 
God  with  individuals  is  a  literal  and  commonplace 
fact.  That  type  of  man  whose  affairs  have  got 
out  of  his  hands  by  overgrowth  ;  who  now  has 
so  many  subordinates  at  work  for  him  that  he 
cannot  possibly  know  them  longer  by  name  and 
face  and  with  personal  interest,  is  no  longer  to  be 
called  a  father  to  his  dependents,  as  in  the  old 
days  of  patriarchal  industry  a  good  employer 
might  very  appropriately  have  been  styled.  The 
distinctive  product  of  the  stupendous  modern 
factory  system  is  the  general  manager,  who  has 
not  men  to  do  the  work  for  him  but  a  force  to 
do  it  under  him.  The  business  has  grown  to 
such    immense     proportions    that    the    general 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  55 

manager  can  no  longer  consider  men  at  all ;  he 
is  barely  able  to  keep  the  business  itself  in  sight 
through  his  elaborate  system  and  routine.  Now 
the  whole  question  here  at  stake  is  whether  the 
business  of  governing  mankind  has  likewise 
grown  so  enormous  and  distracting  that  it  has 
reduced  God  to  the  hard-driven  role  of  a  general 
manager.  It  would  be  pity  of  pity  if  that  had 
indeed  happened ;  all  the  unmoral  conditions  of 
our  modern  industrial  situation  have  followed 
the  change  that  obliterated  personal  relations 
from  between  employer  and  employed,  for  a  man 
and  a  mass  can  never  be  in  love.  A  like  un- 
morality  would  soon  disrupt  a  universe  where 
there  was  only  a  God  and  a  mass  to  deal  back 
and  forth  between  earth  and  heaven.  Once  again 
the  heart  revolts ;  understanding  all  that  the 
theory  of  impersonal  providence  means,  it  will 
not  have  it  so.  The  soul  cries  out  for  a  Father 
and  will  not  be  orphaned  by  its  own  logic. 

Fatherhood  will  not  content  itself  with  provid- 
ing for  the  family  a  general  fund  of  support,  out 
of  which  each  child  may  get  for  himself  the  best 
that  by  shift  and  scramble  he  can  secure. 
Fatherhood  will  not  be  satisfied  with  the  dis- 
cipline of  a  reform  school  where  uniform  dress 
and  treadmill  exercise  make  every  boy  like  all 
the  rest.  The  true  father  rejoices  to  make  dis- 
tinction among  his  children — not  the  distinction 
of  favouritism,  not  the  injustice  of  taking  from 


^6  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

the  one  to  bestow  upon  the  other,  but  the  kindly 
discrimination  which  answers  to  the  pecuhar 
traits  of  each  with  the  exhibits  of  love  most  suit- 
able thereto.  How  sadly  would  a  father  convict 
himself  of  lack  of  insight  and  lack  of  interest  if 
he  brought  home  to  his  children  identical  Christ- 
mas presents  for  all.  He  has  entered  but 
poorly  into  their  hearts  if  he  has  not  learned 
how  to  suit  with  varying  gifts  the  instinctive 
bent  of  their  various  natures.  He  cannot  teach 
different  laws  of  righteousness  to  different  chil- 
dren, but  he  must  teach  the  same  laws  with 
different  emphasis  and  by  adapted  methods  of 
impression  if  he  would  affect  each  of  the  young 
lives  equally.  And  when  it  comes  to  matters  of 
education,  the  father  must  plan  still  more 
diversely ;  he  must  study  the  inborn  talent,  the 
native  trend,  of  son  and  daughter,  and  afford  to 
each  the  advantages  that  will  serve  most 
effectually  their  respective  development.  All  this 
is  a  parent's  special  providence — done  not  in 
contradiction  of  his  comprehensive  duty  to  all 
the  family  but  as  a  required  part  and  phase  of 
that  duty  without  which  the  inclusive  obligation 
would  have  been  left  incomplete.  And  it  is  for 
such  individual  adaptation  of  His  divine  bounties 
that  we  look  to  a  loving  God  above,  before 
whom  none  of  us  are  more  than  children  ;  with 
whom  :'j  :s  honour  and  riches  enough  to  be  that 
alone.     And  here  again  our  faith  is  only  that 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  57 

simple  faith  which  the  Master  justified :  "  Of 
which  of  you  that  is  a  father  shall  his  son? 
.  .  .  how  much  more  shall  your  heavenly 
Father  ! " 

There  is  then  room  in  reason  for  a  logical 
belief  in  individual  providence — in  prayer  heeded 
at  the  Centre  of  the  universe  and  answered  when 
it  agrees  with  the  Universal  Will.  There  re- 
mains of  course  the  experimental  question — 
whether  in  actual  living  men  do  enjoy  these 
prayer  answers  which  are  rationally  possible. 
For  that  question  no  reply  can  be  written  in  a 
book.  It  must  be  answered  by  test.  It  is  for 
every  man  to  try  and  see.  It  is  for  every  man 
to  look  and  see.  Yet  those  who  put  the  reality 
of  prayer  to  trial,  either  in  the  study  of  other 
men's  lives  or  in  the  outworking  of  their  own, 
must  beware  not  to  conclude  their  opinions  too 
hastily.  Certain  manifest  principles  are  to  be 
taken  into  account  which  some  have  blindly 
ignored  who  are  ready  to  proclaim  prayer  a  de- 
lusion. 

It  will  not  do,  for  example,  to  hold  that  pray- 
ing is  vain  because  such  and  such  a  godly  man, 
having  asked  for  a  good  favour,  did  not  obtain 
it.  Still  less  is  it  to  be  argued  that  prayer  is 
discredited  because  in  a  devised  case  various 
persons  have  agreed  to  ask  for  some  curious  sign 
and  have  not  received  it.  A  remark  so  obvious 
as  this  latter  I  should  scarcely  think  it  needful  to 


58  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

make  if  in  a  recent  work  by  an  eminent  Christian 
scholar  I  had  not  read  a  serious  challenge  to 
praying  men  to  concoct  a  laboratory  experi- 
ment— to  settle  on  some  unlikely  thing  and  pray 
for  it  to  come  to  pass  as  a  demonstration  of 
special  providence.  The  author  rather  brutally 
intimated  that  the  devout  are  afraid  of  such  a  test, 
expecting  no  result  and  shrinking  from  the 
ungrateful  disillusion.  To  a  man  who  can  argue 
so  the  scathing  responses  of  Jesus  Christ  to  the 
Pharisees  who  "  sought  of  Him  a  sign  from 
heaven,"  seem  not  to  have  penetrated.  God  is 
not  an  exhibitor  of  wonders.  He  answers 
prayers  as  He  does  all  His  work — for  concrete 
ends  of  good.  Like  the  supreme  court  of  our 
land,  the  Supreme  Court  of  heaven  passes  on  no 
hypothetical  matters ;  the  petitioner  must  have  a 
real  case  in  order  to  obtain  attention.  More- 
over,— and  this  especially, — not  the  most  select 
coterie  of  the  veriest  saints  on  earth  would  have 
any  right  to  present  their  prayers  as  demands 
upon  God.  No  matter  how  thoroughly  per- 
suaded they  might  be  that  they  asked  only  what 
was  good ;  no  matter  how  real  in  their  opinion 
might  be  the  need  for  the  supply  of  which  they 
made  intercession,  it  would  be  far  beyond  the 
conscious  fallibility  of  all  wise  men  to  assert  that 
Goodness  and  Power  and  Knowledge  in  the 
absolute  could  do  no  better  than  to  do  their 
way.     All  the  piety  in  the  world  of  men  could 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  59 

not  frame  one  complete  prayer  without  "  Thy 
will  be  done  "  for  its  climax. 

If  prayer  framed  by  a  multitude  of  counselors 
for  objects  external  to  their  own  interests  cannot 
be  certified  to  God  as  safe  to  indorse  without  ex- 
amination, prayer  offered  by  the  individual  soul 
for  blessings  within  its  own  hfe  boundaries,  liable 
to  the  admixture  of  adulterant  selfishness,  may 
hardly  claim  God's  "  carte  blanche  "  in  return. 
Indeed,  it  is  the  necessary  groundwork  of  any 
sane  faith  in  prayer  to  have  it  understood  that 
God  answers  not  with  the  "  let  it  be  so  "  of  some 
lazy  despot,  but  with  active  deliberation  and  con- 
triving of  His  own  highest  wisdom  for  our  ad- 
vantage not  merely  immediate  but  ultimate. 
There  would  be  no  genuine  comfort  in  the  per- 
mission to  pray  if  it  gave  only  access  to  a 
reservoir  of  power  with  no  discretion  but  our 
own  to  determine  the  use  of  power.  Any  soul 
that  knows  itself  right  well  knows  only  too  well 
that  it  needs,  more  than  the  supplement  of  weak- 
ness, the  correction  of  folly.  And  the  profound- 
est  satisfaction  of  prayer  in  the  heart  that  con- 
siders its  privileges  truly,  is  not  the  thought  that 
what  is  asked  is  now  about  to  be  obtained,  but 
that  what  is  asked  is  submitted  to  the  wisdom  of 
Another  who  in  all-wise  love  will  deny  harmful 
things  sought  in  ignorance.  Every  full  grown 
man  is  thankful  now  for  some  of  his  father's  re- 
fusals that  seemed  harsh  in  boyhood.     Taking 


6o  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

into  account  the  aspect  of  life  which  always  lies 
before  our  physical  sight,  it  is  perhaps  not  blame- 
worthy that  the  most  of  our  prayers  are  for 
material  blessings.  But  the  God  who  is  wholly 
spirit  must  necessarily  count  spiritual  things  of 
more  worth,  and  He  cannot  be  expected  to  bestow 
a  blessing  for  the  body  which  would  be  a  detri- 
ment to  the  soul.  He  must  be  expected  on  the 
contrary  to  secure  spiritual  growth  even  at 
material  expense,  where  by  any  chance  the 
spiritual  and  material  may  be  at  odds.  It  would 
be  a  sad  miscalculation  therefore  to  count  on  an 
agreeable  response  to  every  prayer  for  temporal 
good  fortune. 

This  observation  is,  however,  not  intended  to 
substantiate  that  mediaeval  monkish  notion  that 
all  the  good  things  of  the  present  world  are  en- 
joyed, if  at  all,  at  so  much  fixed  cost  to  the 
spirit  and  its  religious  life.  Under  the  influence 
of  that  idea  a  few  were  courageous  enough  to 
renounce  every  temporal  joy  for  the  sake  of  the 
soul's  cultivation,  but  the  most  were  not  equal  to 
the  unnatural  and  needless  sacrifice.  A  truer 
apprehension  sees  that  normally  it  is  the  purpose 
of  God  that  His  obedient  children  shall  enjoy  the 
best  things  of  earth — the  actually  best.  The 
lesson  is  not  that  those  who  would  please  Him 
must  voluntarily  devote  themselves  to  gloom  and 
asceticism,  but  only  that  they  should  try  to  hold 
the  external  delights  of  life  at  their  true  valuation 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  6i 

— ^which,  of  course,  sensible  men  must  be  pre- 
pared to  surrender  for  any  more  lasting  satisfac- 
tion that  excludes  them.  In  part  it  is  the  man's 
duty  to  study  such  exclusions  and  adopt  them  of 
his  own  motion  for  the  sake  of  the  higher  life, 
but  in  larger  part  he  needs  the  lesson  to  reconcile 
him  to  the  ordering  of  God,  who  takes  away  the 
pleasant  bauble  that  He  may  bestow  the  genuine 
jewel.  Over  against  the  unquestionable  fact  that 
the  good  people  of  the  earth,  taken  all  in  all  to- 
gether, do  have  much  better  fortune  in  life  than 
the  bad  people,  must  be  set  the  other  fact,  quite 
as  far  above  dispute,  that  many  good  people  are 
made  better  and  many  bad  people  turned  back 
to  righteousness  by  being  deprived  of  their 
pleasures  and  thrust  into  loss,  affliction  and  sor- 
row. The  man  absorbed  in  his  tangible  posses- 
sions, having  lost  them,  thinks  more  of  treasures 
in  heaven.  The  man  who  in  health  and  strength 
carried  with  him  a  proud  sense  of  self-sufficiency, 
begins  in  sickness  to  feel  his  need  of  a  stronger 
arm.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  from  the 
viewpoint  of  the  spiritual  Governor  of  men, 
there  could  be  a  moment's  hesitance  to  cast  away 
health  and  property  for  these  spiritual  results. 
Moreover  the  heavenly  Father,  while  heartily  de- 
lighting to  fill  the  cup  of  goodness  and  mercy  to 
the  brim  for  those  whom  He  cherishes,  must 
keenly  feel  the  necessity  of  breaking  the  Hnk  be- 
tween goodness  and  prosperity  now  and  again  in 


62  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

order  to  save  the  suspicion  that  goodness  has  a 
commercial  purchasing  value  at  the  marts  of 
providence.  "  Doth  Job  fear  God  for  naught  ?  " 
Well,  sometimes  at  least  he  must,  both  to  stop 
the  mouth  of  Satan  and  to  save  Job  himself  from 
putting  a  price  on  character.  And  it  seems  ap- 
parent at  any  rate  that  it  is  by  moderate  gifts  of 
earthly  benefits  that  God  conveys  the  fullest  joy ; 
the  wicked  He  punishes  either  by  dire  poverty  or 
excessive  wealth. 

It  may  be  said  that  such  remarks  leave  the 
signs  of  prayer-answer  so  uncertain  that  no  man 
can  make  test  of  the  theory  practically.  By  this 
reasoning  failure  to  secure  the  gift  prayed  for 
may  be  as  good  a  sign  of  providence  as  the 
coming  of  the  gift.  Nothing  then  is  proved 
either  way.  And  this  I  think  true  as  respects 
any  one  given  circumstance.  I  should  not 
venture  to  fix  on  any  one  blessing  in  my  life 
as  proof  that  God  is  concerned  for  my  welfare. 
Nor  of  all  the  remarkable  instances  that  I  have 
heard  narrated  by  others  do  I  recall  any  entirely 
convincing.  In  truth  I  doubt  the  serviceable- 
ness  of  the  industry  shown  by  some  who  go 
about  labelling  unrelated  incidents  "  Marvellous 
Answers  to  Prayer."  It  is  too  easy  for  the  un- 
persuaded  to  reply,  "Coincidences!"  But  the 
real  proof  comes  in  the  consonant  experience  of  a 
whole  life  together — a  form  of  demonstration 
which  means  more,  of  course,  to  the  man  him- 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  63 

self  than  it  can  mean  to  any  other.  But  that 
limitation  is  also  doubtless  intended ;  God  would 
have  this  faith  more  for  the  sustenance  of  each 
life  within  itself  than  for  retailing  far  abroad. 
One  occasion  of  blessing  may  be  a  coincident, 
but  a  whole  life  of  blessing  is  not  strung  to- 
gether from  happen-sos.  Not  simply  a  single 
circumstance  convinces,  but  two,  three,  a  dozen, 
a  thousand  circumstances  in  a  conspiracy  of  good 
pile  up  the  cumulative  proof  that  finally  com- 
mands the  invincible  faith  of  the  happy  soul. 
And  especially  when  a  man  is  able  to  discover  in 
some  disaster  or  affliction  the  direct  agent  for 
helping  him  up  to  a  loftier  attainment  than  would 
otherwise  have  been  possible  to  him,  he  has 
made  the  demonstration  absolute.  Only  a  divine 
intervention  can  produce  from  the  rock  the 
sweetness  of  honey  and  the  cool  drink  of  living 
fountains.  As  from  stage  to  stage  of  life  one 
goes  on  to  find,  as  Paul  says,  that  all  things  work 
together  for  his  good, — light  and  shadow  blend- 
ing and  major  and  minor  chords  singing  them- 
selves into  harmony, — a  comprehending,  fore- 
seeing thought  of  it  all  becomes  more  and  more 
necessary  to  explain  the  mystery  of  the  lengthen- 
ing agreement.  And  who  should  be  the  thinker 
of  that  thought  save  Him  who  spake  to  Israel : 
"  I  know  the  thoughts  that  I  think  towards  you, 
thoughts  of  peace  and  not  of  evil,  to  give  you 
hope  in  your  latter  end." 


64  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

Special  providence  in  the  affairs  of  the  many 
is  a  more  hidden  problem.  Human  calamities 
of  the  sort  for  which  the  names  Pelee,  Iroquois 
and  Slocum  stand  in  the  shuddering  memory  of 
the  present-day  man,  are  tangled  puzzles.  Their 
place  in  the  governmental  poHcy  of  God  it  may 
be  beyond  the  earthly  mind  to  discern.  But 
some  considerations  of  various  degrees  of  perti- 
nence may  be  recalled  as  emphasizing  at  least  the 
ignorance  that  forbids  us  to  say  that  God  is  un- 
just. Perhaps  the  most  pertinent  is  to  remind 
ourselves  of  the  outstanding  note  of  this  discus- 
sion— that  indulgent  blessing  is  not  the  first 
principle  of  God's  sway.  The  fundamental 
standard  of  His  dealing  with  men  is  the  law  of 
righteousness  ;  His  fundamental  purpose  not  to 
make  men  happy  but  to  conform  their  characters 
to  that  everlasting  law.  He  can  then  never  ex- 
tend His  benevolence  to  a  point  where  it  might 
obscure  the  statutes  of  His  kingdom.  His  love 
and  pity  may  have  carried  men  many  days  of 
old,  and  yet  when  they  begin  to  presume  upon 
His  mercy  and  to  persuade  themselves  that  He 
no  more  exacts  the  penalties  of  sin,  He  must 
wreathe  His  chariot  with  clouds  again  and  let  the 
lightnings  strike.  Then  men  know  that  judg- 
ment has  not  perished  from  the  heavens.  When 
those  charged  with  responsibility  for  the  lives  of 
their  fellows  have  grown  reckless  of  their  duty, 
how  shall  God  recall  them  to  fidelity  and  the  sav- 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  65 

ing  thought  for  others  except  by  leaving  them  to 
the  due  consequences  of  their  neglect?  The 
nature  of  those  consequences  is  of  course  such 
as  involves  the  innocent  with  the  guilty — the 
innocent  perhaps  in  far  the  greater  suffering. 
But  that  too  is  of  long  fixed  law.  A  part  of  the 
punishment  of  the  wicked  is  the  shame  of  bring- 
ing undeserved  evil  upon  the  heads  of  the 
righteous.  The  awful  lesson  of  the  disasters  in 
burning  building  and  burning  ship  just  recurred 
to,  would  have  been  a  lesson  incomplete  and  by 
so  much  less  efficient  if  some  miracle  of  selection 
had  provided  for  the  escape  of  all  the  women 
and  children.  The  sacrifice  of  these  white  lives 
was  just  what  cut  through  hardened  consciences 
to  the  quick.  The  volcano's  outburst  is,  by 
candid  admission,  a  still  heavier  theme  for  faith 
to  handle,  but  its  reason  also,  if  we  could  probe 
to  it,  would  doubtless  appear  to  be  a  reason  of 
government  on  the  one  hand  and  perchance  like- 
wise a  reason  of  sin  on  the  other. 

Men  who  see  other  men  only  by  externals 
can  never  know  "  how  unsearchable  are  His 
judgments  and  His  ways  past  tracing  out."  God 
sees  the  hidden  desert.  A  punishment  falling 
on  what  appears  to  us  a  blameless  life  may 
actually  have  searched  out  some  secret  sin  ag- 
gravated by  prolonged  and  gross  offense  against 
light.  It  may  be  the  exaction  of  a  score  long 
overdue,  forgotten  by  ail  except  by  the  One  who 


66  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

never  forgets.  Some  far-spread  misfortunes  are 
undoubtedly  disciplinary  for  peoples  as  individual 
sufferings  are  disciplinary  for  single  souls.  Many 
are  hurt  in  the  mischief  of  their  mistakes  who  are 
not  condemned  for  sin ;  for  the  God  who  for- 
gives, still,  as  with  Moses  and  Aaron  and  Samuel 
of  the  patriarchs  and  prophets,  takes  vengeance 
of  the  doings  of  the  good.  And  withal,  while 
we  debate  these  seemingly  harsh  providences 
there  remains  to  remember  the  Christian  story  of 
a  life  beyond  which  forbids  us  to  call  death  the 
supreme  calamity.  If  righteous  men  are  to  live 
again  in  a  better  state  than  this,  an  ordering  of 
human  affairs  which  hastens  them  thither  cannot 
be  reasonably  treated  as  a  cataclysm  of  disaster 
for  them.  Men  most  inconsistently  profess  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  immortality  and  belie  their 
own  profession  by  speaking  of  death  as  if  it  were 
the  last  abyss  of  irrevocable  disaster.  Let  us  not 
coddle  our  faith  by  denying  the  hard  questions 
of  life,  but  in  our  questionings  let  us  give  God  at 
least  the  benefit  of  His  own  truth. 

And  when  we  are  weary  of  the  weighing  of 
minute  doubts  and  their  answers,  let  us  rest  our- 
selves with  a  wider  view.  Take  account  of  the 
beginning  of  the  race,  and  behold  to-day's  stage 
of  its  march  towards  its  yet  invisible  destiny.  Is 
there  any  man  of  the  stubborn  hardihood  to 
deny  that  all  the  path  hither  has  been  in  one 
direction  forward  and  by  steady  rise  upward  to 


The  Rationalities  of  Prayer  67 

things  higher  and  better  than  racial  infancy  had 
the  imagination  to  dream  of?  Then  who  is 
Leader  on  the  road  ?  Is  it  by  wilderness  wander- 
ing that  humanity  has  come  so  far  ?  Nay  ;  look 
again  and  see  ♦'  the  fiery,  cloudy  pillar."  The 
methods  of  providence  may  not  be  vindicated  on 
every  page  of  history,  but  they  will  be  vindicated 
before  the  volume  is  closed.  A  redeemed  society, 
a  purified  earth,  a  loyal  kingdom,  will  yet  prove 
the  age-long  Worker  in  His  glorious  work.  The 
event  let  us  await  in  the  sweet  Quaker  bard's 
confidence : 

"Believe  and  trust;  through  stars  and  suns, 

Through  life  and  death,  through  soul  and  sense, 
His  wise  paternal  purpose  runs ; 
The  darkness  of  His  providence 
Is  star-lit  with  divine  intents." 


Ill 

The  Possibility  of  Miracle 


in 

THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIRACLE 

Respecting  Bible  miracles  the  one  correction 
of  view  that  would  go  furthest  to  clear  the  popular 
mind  would  be  a  dispelling  of  the  notion  that  a 
miracle  is  God's  first  preferred  method.  Our  own 
predilections  are  debased  by  our  lust  for  the 
spectacular;  we  love  to  accomplish  our  designs 
by  the  most  singular  and  bizarre  methods  that 
we  can  invent.  We  tire  of  routine  and  plan  to 
amaze  all  onlookers  by  doing  some  new  thing  m 
an  outlandish  way.  In  our  smallness  we  imagme 
that  it  must  be  for  some  like  reason  that  the  Lord 
works — or  has  worked — miracles. 

At  the  utmost  remove  from  such  a  conception, 
the  Bible  consistently  implies  that  God  employs 
miracle   with   reluctance    and   only   in  extreme 
necessity— where  no  other  method  is  available. 
It  is  particularly  apparent  that  Jesus  deliberately 
subordinated   the    miracle   element   in  His  own 
ministry,  doing   wonders  sparingly,— except,   it 
may  be,  as  to  miracles  of  heaUng,— and  seekmg 
to  reduce  the  area  of  each  miracle  with  as  many 
adjuncts    of   natural    circumstance    as    possible. 
Before  He  fed  the  five  thousand,  He  gathered  to- 
gether all  the  natural  food  supply  of  the  camp  ; 
71 


72  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

before  He  called  Lazarus  from  the  grave,  He  had 
neighbours*  hands  roll  back  the  sepulchre  door. 
And  herein  without  question  the  Master  truly 
pictures  His  Father  and  ours.  The  ordinary- 
course  of  nature  is  not  to  God  an  irksome  hum- 
drum from  which  at  every  trivial  excuse  He  flings 
Himself  forth  into  erratic  excursions  of  magic. 
This  is  not  a  discredited  arrangement  of  affairs 
under  which  the  world  runs  on,  one  common  day 
after  another.  It  is  the  superior  arrangement. 
The  common  way  of  things  is  the  best  way ;  the 
order  of  nature  the  most  excellent  order.  Above 
all,  it  is  the  normal  and,  in  the  most  comprehen- 
sive sense,  the  natural  way — natural  to  the  human 
soul  as  well  as  to  things  material  and  inanimate. 
How  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  Why  should  God 
ordain  it  to  be  usual  if  it  were  not  best  ?  Would 
He  drive  a  heavy-wheeled  chariot  year  after  year 
in  order  to  save  a  better  chariot  for  His  occasions 
of  state  ? 

Miracle  then  is  abnormal ;  it  meets  conditions 
abnormal  among  men,  and  provides  for  emergen- 
cies unprovided  for  in  the  regular  working  speci- 
fications of  the  universe.  It  is  extorted  by  crisis. 
The  greatest  miracle  recorded  in  history  is  that 
God  gave  His  Son  to  become  flesh  for  the  salva- 
tion of  men,  and  the  worst  abnormality  in  the 
world — the  fact  of  sin — made  that  miracle  neces- 
sary, for  the  natural  mechanism  of  creation  in- 
cluded no  apparatus  for  forgiving  sins.     So  like- 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  73 

wise  have  other  deficiencies  of  humanity  required 
miracle.  As  the  Saviour  taught  so  plainly,  the 
Father  seeks  worshippers  to  render  their  homage 
spiritually.  By  the  still  voice  that  speaks  with- 
out words  in  the  secret  heart  of  the  inner  man, 
God  had  rather  come  to  His  children.  But  He 
can  avail  Himself  of  other  means  i(  He  must.  In 
the  olden  time  He  brought  forth  out  of  a  degrad- 
ing bondage  a  race  singularly  suited  to  His  prov- 
idential purposes.  It  was  a  race  potentially 
spiritual,  but  at  that  epoch  of  development  still 
too  gross  for  strictly  spiritual  influences  to  touch 
either  its  faith  or  its  will.  Must  this  people  then 
go  uninstructed  because  their  King  could  not 
speak  to  their  understanding  in  the  language  of 
the  heavenly  courts?  By  no  means;  if  heart 
speech  will  not  reach  them.  He  will  make  them 
understand  in  the  sign  language  of  the  deaf. 
How  vain  it  would  have  been  to  bid  them  study 
the  linking  together  of  life's  commonplaces — to 
hope  that  in  the  daily  dovetailing  of  ordinary 
blessings  they  would  see  tokens  of  a  Hand  of 
divine  skill.  It  must  be  a  great,  startling  object- 
lesson  by  which  such  untutored  slaves  learn  prov- 
idence, and  that  object-lesson  they  shall  have, 
— a  wind-blown  sea-bottom  safe  till  they  have 
escaped,  then  a  mortal  snare  to  their  enemies. 
Fresh  from  a  land  where  all  the  gods  were 
imaged  in  tangible  shape,  they  could  not  con- 
ceive at  once  a  God  unembodied  and  present  with 


74  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

them  invisibly.  But  Jehovah,  though  He  could 
not  lend  His  glory  to  a  graven  image,  was  not 
baffled.  A  pillar  of  fire  sentinelling  their  camp 
by  night,  of  cloud  guiding  it  by  day  ;  the  light- 
ning-riven smoke  veihng  the  mountain  crest ;  the 
banquet  table  spread  before  the  mysterious  sap- 
phire vision  in  Sinai's  high  recess, — with  one 
device  and  another  the  spiritual  God  made  Him-^ 
self  real  to  this  unspiritual  people.  And  so  long 
years  together  and  patiently  He  bent  Himself 
to  education  of  these  childish  wards  of  His  by 
ways  that  behooved  the  Teacher  of  children. 

But  will  He  therefore  desire  to  come  now  in  an 
elder  age  of  mankind  and  manifest  His  presence 
before  His  worshippers  again  by  wonders  of  the 
fiery  cloud  and  the  earthquaking  trumpet  ? 
Verily,  no ;  "  for  ye  are  not  come  unto  a  mount 
that  might  be  touched  and  that  burned  with  fire, 
and  unto  blackness  and  darkness  and  tempest, 
and  the  sound  of  a  trumpet  and  the  voice  of 
words,  .  .  .  but  ye  are  come  unto  Mount 
Zion  and  unto  the  city  of  the  living  God." 
After  all  these  centuries  of  wooing  the  souls  of 
men  to  know  Him  as  Father  of  their  spirits, 
what  pity  if  of  all  those  who  gather  in  His  courts 
He  could  yet  address  few  or  none  in  that  spirit- 
ual speech  which  is  the  native  tongue  of  Deity. 
That  God  should  ever  need  to  speak  in  thunders 
is  no  doubt  to  Him  a  painful  requirement,  as  to  a 
gentleman  obliged  to  shout  aloud  in  the  market- 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  75 

place.     He  loves  rather  quiet  heart-to-heart  con- 
verse heralded  by  no  external  sign,  nor  by  any 
sign   in  the  soul   itself,  save  the  sweet  glow  of 
warmth    excited    when    a    Friend   draws    near. 
Vast,  then,  would  be  the  error  which  expected  to 
see  Sinai  repeated  where  enHghtened  congrega- 
tions of  His  saints  appear  to-day.     And  even 
among  those  who  do  not  know  Him  well,  it  is  a 
truer  introduction  of  the  Holy  Self  wherein  He 
would  become  Companion   and   Helper,  if  His 
voice  is  heard  pleading  and  gentle,— a  word  very 
nigh  them,  wakening  their  ears  to  hear  as  those 
that  are  taught.     Any  other  fashion  of  address  is 
an  exceptional  expedient  to  reach  a  desperate 

case, as  was  the  smiting  of  Saul  in  the  Damascus 

highway. 

LXhe  obvious  question  which,  with  unphilosoph- 
ical  people  at  least,  makes  all  the  difficulty  in 
reading  miraculous  Bible  history,  is  the  question 
why  there  are  not  miracles  nowif  there  were  mir- 
acles in  Bible  times.  The  prevalent  treatment  of 
the  subject  in  the  churches  points  logically  to  the 
conclusion— though  to  come  out  there  would 
evoke  horror— that  God  lacks  some  power  that  I  le 
once  had.  It  is  constantly  assumed  that  supernatu- 
ral manifestations  of  His  omnipotence  are  God's 
special  delight,— even  His  forte,  if  one  may  say 
so  reverently.  By  presumption  from  that  view- 
point, it  could  be  argued  that  God  would  crowd 
into  the  world  now  and  always  all  the  miracles 


76  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

that  He  could  manage.  But  reverse  the  pre- 
sumption, and  we  come  out  on  what  agrees  with 
history  as  we  have  it, — that  as  the  world  develops 
and  comes  nearer  to  the  ideal  towards  which 
God  is  working,  miracles  grow  fewer  and  fewer, 
because  there  is  less  and  less  need  of  them. 
From  the  day  of  Eden  until  now  God  has  had 
humanity  in  school.  He  began  in  the  kinder- 
garten, and  He  had  to  use  kindergarten  methods. 
Modern  followers  of  Froebel  have  merely  been 
picking  out  in  the  latter  generations  principles  of 
pedagogy  that  the  Creator  applied  from  the 
eozoic  hour  of  His  human  enterprise.  The 
teacher  of  the  youngest  learners  gives  shaped 
blocks  and  coloured  cards  and  paper  figures  for 
lessons — concrete  things  for  minds  to  grasp  which 
are  not  yet  able  to  hold  to  things  abstract. 
These  least  folk  must  learn  the  primary  processes 
of  mathematics  on  an  abacus  of  bright  beads ; 
even  written  symbols — not  to  speak  of  unaided 
mental  calculations — are  beyond  them.  But  will 
the  educator  argue  that  because  child-training  has 
begun  with  kindergarten  objects,  it  must  be  con- 
tinued to  high  school  and  college  with  the  same 
apparatus  ?  Not  so  ;  the  beads  are  soon  super- 
seded by  chalked  signs  on  the  blackboard,  and 
the  skilled  teacher  is  by  no  means  content  until 
even  the  conventional  symbols  are  gone  and  the 
ready  scholar  can  think  the  process  through  by 
mathematic  imagination.     So  all  education  pro- 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  77 

gresses,  leaving  behind  the  things  of  form  and 
body  and  going  on  to  the  things  fixed  in  mental 
conception  alone.  Even  physical  science  leads 
the  student  through  such  development, — first  the 
observation  of  the  evident  phenomena,  then  the 
experimental  search  for  phenomena  hidden  and 
elusive,  finally  the  generalization  from  phenomena 
to  nature's  unwritten  statutes.  From  tangible  to 
intangible,  from  crudely  apparent  to  fundamen- 
tally inherent,  is  the  road  of  all  human  learning. 
And  such  likewise  is  the  road  of  human  ad- 
vance in  religion.  The  race  grows  religiously 
from  primary  school  to  high  school.  It  grows 
from  apprehension  with  the  eyes  to  apprehension 
with  reason  and  affections.  And  the  fact  that 
there  should  have  been  physical  miracles  formerly 
to  attest  the  presence  of  God  and  no  physical 
miracles  now,  is  no  more  strange  than  that  there 
should  be  gaily  coloured  blocks  in  the  kinder- 
garten and  text-books  in  the  university.  The 
centuries  do  not  elapse  in  vain  ;  the  race  acquires 
education.  It  would  make  a  certain  doubt  of  the 
pedagogic  wisdom  of  God  if  it  should  appear  that 
to  the  highly  developed  humanity  of  the  current 
age  He  had  no  appeal  different  from  that  which 
served  to  command  the  faith  of  the  nomadic 
patriarchs.  Sometimes  it  is  alleged  to  be  a  sus- 
picious count  against  the  miracle  stories  that  they 
come  from  a  time  when  miracles  were  constantly 
expected  by  the  populace.     On  the  contrary  this 


78  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

fact  substantiates  the  stories,  for  it  signifies  that 
God  used  the  high  common  sense  of  giving  to 
His  message  the  form  that  suited  the  age  to  which 
it  was  dispatched.  It  shows  that  God  is  not 
above  expedients  that  **  reach  the  masses."  It  is 
a  striking  note  of  verification  in  the  narrative  of 
the  wise  men  who  came  to  worship  the  infant 
Christ  that  they  are  said  to  have  travelled  to 
Judaea  in  obedience  to  a  star  sign.  The  Zoroas- 
trian  Magi  are  historically  known  to  have  been 
devoted  astrologers  and  to  have  entertained  ex- 
pectations of  a  Messiah.  The  revelation  of  Jesus 
was  consequently  in  their  case  made  meet  for  as- 
trologers. That  a  star  in  the  Persian  sky  should 
have  been  to  them  a  true  guide  to  the  world's 
Redeemer  proves  not  that  God  upholds  astrology, 
but  that  men  who  seriously  seek  religious  guid- 
ance through  a  delusion,  may  be  compassionately 
met  and  aided  by  a  watchful  Lord  even  in  the 
field  of  their  delusion.  God's  earthly  preachers 
may  have  much  anxious  care  for  the  dignity  of 
their  methods ;  God  evidently  is  concerned  only 
that  the  method  be  honest  and  kindly,  effectual 
both  in  reaching  men  and  for  showing  truth. 

Nevertheless  the  Father  in  His  ministry  to  men 
does  not  forever  follow  with  indulgent  grace  the 
vagaries  of  the  superstitious.  Gently,  gradually, 
He  draws  them  out  to  a  clearer  path  and  a 
brighter  light.  He  grants  the  crutch  of  the  mi- 
raculous to  help  halt  feet,  but  at  the  same  time  He 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  79 

would  teach  the  strong  to  run  without  it.  Jesus 
Christ  came  at  a  time  when  it  is  improbable  that 
anybody  would  have  acknowledged  His  divine- 
ness  if  He  had  done  no  "  mighty  work."  Such 
works  were  the  universally  expected  manifest  of 
incarnate  God.  The  Master,  therefore,  did  per- 
form certain  wonders  which  He  offered  as  His 
credentials.  Yet  they  were  not  wonders  promis- 
cuous and  unlimited.  Without  exception  He 
made  them  benevolently  useful  to  the  needy  and 
offered  none  as  baits  to  curiosity-seekers.  Like- 
wise they  all  had  the  singularly  beautiful  distinc- 
tion of  being  in  no  way  for  His  own  advantage 
or  personal  comfort.  Repeatedly  He  refused 
skeptical  challenges  to  make  exhibition  of  His 
power;  He  had  no  answer  at  all  for  the  insolent 
question  :  "  What  doest  Thou  for  a  sign  that  we 
may  see  and  believe  Thee  ;  what  workest  Thou  ?  " 
To  the  undeveloped  common  people  He  would 
accommodate  His  teaching  as  their  ignorance 
might  require,  but  to  stubborn,  proud  bigotry, 
the  Pharisaic  blindness  that  with  pompous  con- 
fidence led  the  bhnd,  He  would  afford  no  encour- 
agement. It  must  have  been  great  joy  to  Him 
to  be  sought  out  by  such  a  Jewish  grandee  as 
Nicodemus,  who  asked  no  more  signs  but  desired 
to  hear  the  truth  of  God  to  which  the  signs 
pointed.  Were  Jesus  Christ  to  come  again  on  a 
preaching  mission  to  a  time  and  nation  like  our 
own, — enlightened    enough   to   comprehend   in 


8o  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

some  degree  the  mysteries  of  nature  itself  as 
divine, — He  would  doubtless  do  nothing  more 
supernatural  in  a  physical  way  than  the  great 
human  preachers  of  our  generation  are  doing. 
The  manifestation  of  His  glory  He  would  make 
just  as  exclusively  spiritual  as  conditions  around 
Him  would  allow.  If  He  came  instead  to  the 
cruder  heathen  of  uncivilized  nations,  the  miracles 
might  be  as  necessary  as  of  old.  And  indeed  the 
argument  suggests  in  passing  the  observation  that 
nearly  all  the  well  authenticated  instances  that 
smack  of  miracle  in  modern  times  are  reported 
from  the  mission  fields.  China  alone,  for  exam- 
ple, seems  to  furnish  a  recognizable  present-day 
analogue  for  demoniac  possession  and  its  cure  in 
the  name  of  Christ. 

LThe  Bible  is  not  a  miracle  book.  To  say  this 
is,  of  course,  to  contradict  a  prevalent  impression, 
for  to  most  casual-minded  people  the  miracles  are 
the  most  characteristic  feature  of  the  Scriptures. 
The  theme  and  outlook  of  the  Book  are  indeed 
distinctly  supernatural,  and  every  page  carries  the 
high  faith  that  God  has  directly  to  do  with  the 
affairs  of  men,  and  orders  the  march  of  events  by 
the  interposition  of  His  providence.  But  for  the 
most  part  the  method  of  action  is  His  accustomed 
action  familiar  and  expected  to  this  day.  It  is 
only  of  comparatively  rare  occasion  that  the 
governing  King  is  recorded  to  have  accomplished 
His  counsel  among  men  by  means  so  unique  as 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  8i 

properly  to  be  termed  miraculous.  If  this  were 
a  volume  of  marvel  tales  got  up  out  of  the  folk- 
lore of  a  credulous  peasantry,  or  concocted  for 
the  religious  impression  which  the  legends  were 
expected  to  convey,  its  authors  would  not  have 
produced  so  meagre  a  showing.  Where  mere 
wonder-mongering  runs  to,  when  licensed  imagi- 
nation is  at  work,  any  one  may  see  by  reading 
the  apocryphal  gospels  or  the  mediaeval  lives  of 
the  saints.  Every  paragraph  can  display  its 
amazing  prodigy  in  that  kind  of  writing ;  the  au- 
thors of  such  works  apparently  feel  themselves 
discredited  if  the  story  gets  down  for  even  a  little 
interlude  to  the  hard  ground  of  every-day  plausi- 
bility. There  are  on  the  contrary  long  stretches 
of  Bible  history  as  clear  of  the  marvellous 
as  any  rationalistic  critic  could  demand.  The 
great  mass  of  the  miracles  of  the  Bible  are 
grouped  in  a  very  few  cycles — a  circumstance  un- 
accountable if  they  are  simply  expressions  of  the 
credulity  of  semi-civilization,  which  is  a  constant 
factor,  but  entirely  explicable  if  it  be  admitted 
that  God  resorts  to  miracle  only  in  crises. 
Among  these  miracle  epochs  the  chief  are  the 
times  of  the  migration  of  Israel  from  Egypt  to 
Canaan ;  the  times  of  threatened  destruction  of 
Israelitish  nationality  under  the  chaotic  govern- 
ment of  the  judges ;  the  times  of  religious  decay 
when  Elijah  and  Elisha  were  the  Lord's  commis- 
sioned reformers,  and  finally  the  times  of  the 


82  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

showing  of  the  Christ  and  the  estabHshment  of 
His  church. 

These  were  all  great  times  in  the  history  of 
that  people  among  whom  God  undertook  to  pre- 
serve and  foster  the  germinal  stock  of  the  tree 
whose  leaves  were  in  later  ages  to  heal  the 
nations.  They  were  doubtless  eras  in  which  the 
success  of  the  colossal  experiment  was  most  in 
jeopardy,  and  exceptional  measures  had  become 
absolutely  requisite.  But  they  were  not  the  eras 
which  a  romantic  patriot  writing  an  epic  hero 
history  of  the  fatherland  would  naturally  have 
selected  for  adornment  with  demi-deistic  legend. 
The  fanciful  traditions  of  shepherds'  tents  and 
villagers'  cottages  would  not  have  gathered  by 
mere  gravitation  around  memories  of  religious 
apostasy  or  tribal  vagabondage.  The  days  of 
national  power  instead  would  have  thrilled  the 
racial  imagination  of  the  Jews, — the  more 
especially  since  that  period  of  glory  was  identified 
with  the  two  characters  most  dazzling  in  all  the 
Hebrew  story.  Had  it  been  solely  by  slow  proc- 
ess of  legendizing  that  Bible  miracles  had  been 
created,  they  would  infallibly  have  attached 
themselves  to  the  names  of  David  and  Solomon. 
David  peculiarly  would  have  suited  the  hero  role 
in  a  great  patriotic  saga,  and  his  valorous  deeds, 
if  the  Hebrew  mind  had  worked  with  the 
Olympian  imagination  of  the  Greek,  would  have 
been  the   natural  seed  of  growing  myths.     But 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  83 

of  such  a  tendency  there  is  not  the  least  sign  to 
be  traced  in  the  extant  record.  The  Bible 
biography  of  David  contains  no  incident  of 
human  action  and  only  one  of  divine  interven- 
tion that  could  be  dubbed  incredible  by  the  most 
skeptical  criticism.  The  kilhng  of  Goliath  could 
easily  have  been  the  nucleus  of  a  cycle  of  tales 
as  wonderful  as  the  twelve  labours  of  Hercules. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  biblical  account  is  so 
reserved  that  the  greatest  improbability  that  can 
be  picked  out  in  the  whole  of  it  is  Saul's  failure 
to  recognize  his  former  minstrel.  The  action  of 
the  narrative  is  a  simple  illustration  of  a  military 
maxim  newly  proved  in  every  generation — that 
mobility  and  marksmanship  are  better  fighting 
assets  than  bulk.  So  with  Solomon  ;  glamourous 
figure  of  magnificence  he  is,  and  yet  the  most 
extraordinary  thing  written  of  him  is  that  he 
heard  God  speak  in  a  dream.  These  lives  are  no 
product  of  myth-making.  The  place  and  pitch 
of  the  miracle  strata  in  the  Bible  are  not  ex- 
plained by  theories  of  folk-lore ;  they  do  not 
occur  where  the  folk-lore  would  have  been  de- 
posited. They  are  like  the  geologic  strata  in  the 
earth — the  records  of  genuine  life. 

1  When  the  question  of  the  authenticity  of 
miracles  is  pending,  the  issue  divides  itself  into 
two.  One  inquiry  is  whether  in  the  nature  of 
things  there  can  be  miracles ;  the  other  is 
whether,  supposing  miracles  to  be  possible,  those 


84  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

recorded  in  the  Bible  are  credibly  attested.  Re- 
specting the  first  matter  much  ground  has  been 
cleared  if  the  argument  of  the  foregoing  chapter 
for  special  providence  has  seemed  reasonable. 
If  it  is  allowed  that  God  enjoys  liberty  enough 
in  His  world  for  kindnesses  to  individual 
creatures,  there  is  room  sufficient  for  miraculous 
kindnesses,  since  those  who  doubt  do  not  dis- 
pute God's  power  but  only  His  freedom  in  the 
presence  of  universal  law.  It  has  already  be- 
come plain,  I  trust,  that  this  book  veils  no  pur- 
pose to  derogate  from  the  subhme  thought  of 
law  as  the  norm  of  God's  governmental  action 
over  man  and  matter.  But  while  it  is  gladly 
recognized  that  there  are  universal  laws  which 
guarantee  the  integrity  of  righteous  principle 
throughout  the  realm  of  creation  "  forever  and  a 
day," — those  oath-confirmed  **  immutable  things 
in  which  it  is  impossible  for  God  to  lie," — yet  it 
is  insisted  that  God  is  not  a  mere  administrative 
officer  whose  discretions  are  confined  to  a  statute 
book.  The  large  fundamentals  of  His  sway  are 
eternally  fixed,  continuous  and  infrangible ;  the 
incidentals  await  His  sovereign  pleasure  to  be 
adapted  to  incidents  as  they  arise.  Part  of  what 
we  call  the  laws  of  God  are  the  manifestations  of 
His  unchanging  goodness  ;  part  the  expressions 
of  His  comprehensive  ageless  purpose.  The 
latter  no  concern  of  a  day  or  year  or  generation 
may  affect.     But  many  apparent  laws  do  not 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  85 

partake  of  that  all-embracing  character.     They 
are   from  God's  standpoint  only  the    normally 
preferable  manner  of  fulfilling  His  fatherly  ob- 
Hgations  to  men.     Knowing   Him  as  a  God  of 
order, — it   may  even   be   said,   of   habit,— it  is 
natural  for  us  to  expect  His  future  action  to  run 
according  to  His  known  and  experienced  past 
action.     And    indeed  there  is   presumption— in 
the  absence  of  known  exceptional  conditions — 
that  all  His  past  action  has  been  uniform.     But 
it  is  certainly  conceivable  that  difference  of  con- 
dition may  at  any  time  make  different  action 
expedient.     And  where  the  difference  involves 
no  breach  of  honour,  honesty  or  fidelity,  there 
is  no  more  impropriety — not  to  speak  of  impos- 
sibility— in  a  change  of  method  on  God's  part 
than  on  the  part  of  any  faithful  man.     As  for 
its  likelihood,  it  would  seem  the  more  likely  by 
as  much  as  God's  omniscient  insight  would  give 
Him  surer  notice  of  deep  conditions  demanding 
change.     And  if  for  divine  expediency  on  any 
day  He  departed  from  His  ordinary  custom  of 
dealing  with  men,  that  would  be  a  miracle. 

Miracles,  therefore,  are  not  mere  eccentricities. 
Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  are  they  radical  revolu- 
tions in  principle.  They  do  not  alter  the 
essential  relations  of  things,  nor  derange  the 
moral  character  of  creation.  And  it  is  a  notable 
point  to  observe  and  verify  that  no  marvel 
announced  in  the  Bible  overruns  the  limits  set 


86  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

by  these  negative  definitions.  It  is  narrated 
that  the  migrating  tribes  of  Israel,  being  in 
imminent  peril  of  starvation  in  a  land  that  could 
not  possibly  afford  them  natural  sustenance, 
were  supphed  with  a  miraculous  food.  Laying 
aside  for  the  moment  the  historic  probability  of 
the  story,  it  cannot  be  contended  that  such  a 
provision  for  an  obscure  people  diverted  the  rule 
of  seed-sowing  and  harvest  in  nature,  unsettled 
the  principle  of  toil  as  price  of  bread  in 
economics,  or  destroyed  the  penalties  of  indo- 
lence in  morals.  After  the  emergent  circum- 
stances were  passed,  Israel  went  back  to  the 
ordinary  experience  of  the  race  at  large,  and 
found  no  law  weakened  by  their  temporary, 
though  prolonged,  hving  under  exceptional 
conditions.  Again  it  became  necessary  for  them 
to  till  the  ground  and  rely  on  rain  and  sunshine. 
Meanwhile  the  rest  of  mankind  were  totally  un- 
affected either  for  advantage  or  detriment. 
Certainly  there  is  no  rational  ground  for  arguing 
that  such  a  special  measure  of  providence  for  a 
peculiar  need  of  a  few  nomads  would  dislocate 
the  order  of  nature  or  the  sanctions  of  morality. 
And  it  is  simply  an  affectation  to  allege  that  it 
would  shake  the  confidence  of  men  thereafter  in 
the  impartial  sway  of  cause  and  effect  in  the 
world ;  millions  who  have  believed  this  history 
true  have  none  the  less  trusted  the  usual  pro- 
vision  for   human   support  and  adapted  them- 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  87 

selves  to  it.  Likewise  it  is  recorded  in  the 
Bible  that  certain  persons  were  raised  from  the 
dead,  but  such  a  fact  did  not  suspend  the  law  of 
mortality  nor  occasion  in  others  a  hope  of  return- 
ing from  the  grave.  The  risen  died  again  under 
universal  law,  and  all  the  rest  of  men  continued 
one  by  one  to  meet  death  as  the  •'  dread,  inevi- 
table hour."  Even  though  Christ  walked  on  the 
water,  calculations  of  specific  gravity  are  not 
thereby  invalidated.  No  bibHcal  wonder  is  of  a 
character  that  could  have  demoralized  nature. 
The  "  standing  still  "  of  the  sun  at  Gibeon  is  the 
only  debatable  exception  to  this  claim,  and  the 
supposition  of  mirage  is  quite  sufficient  to  render 
that — if  one  may  so  say — innocuous.  Or  let  us 
allow,  as  the  text  does  indeed  seem  to  justify, 
that  the  passage  is  exuberantly  metaphorical. 

When  this  subject  is  more  closely  analyzed,  it 
is  clear  that  by  conformity  to  natural  law  we 
mean  simply  conformity  to  our  own  experience, 
or  at  the  most,  conformity  to  the  experience  of 
the  men  of  our  own  times.  A  miracle  is  a 
miracle  not  because  it  is  wonderful  or  even  inex- 
plicable,— modern  science  can  often  enough 
amaze  and  mystify  us, — but  only  because  it  has 
never  happened  within  the  range  of  this  experi- 
ence by  which  our  expectation  is  formed.  Yet 
no  living  man  would  be  foolish  enough  to  aver 
that  his  own  knowledge  or  even  the  combined 
knowledge  of  all  men  covers  to  the  uttermost 


88  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

limits  all  that  is  possible.  Fifteen  years  since 
civilized  men  were  quite  as  proud  of  their  under- 
standing of  the  processes  of  nature  as  they  dare 
to  be  to-day ;  and  yet  it  would  have  then  been 
deemed  impossible  that  rays  of  photographic 
power  could  penetrate  bodies  then  styled  opaque. 
Ten  years  ago  it  would  have  been  regarded  still 
farther  from  possibility  that  electrical  messages 
could  be  transmitted  through  the  air  without 
wire  connection, — ^just  as  seventy-five  years  ago 
electrical  communication  of  any  kind  was  in- 
credible. The  revelation  of  these  possibilities 
has  not  of  course  increased  the  sum  of  natural 
law,  but  only  demonstrated  anew  what  had 
appeared  innumerable  times  before — that  the 
measure  of  human  knowledge  is  no  measure  of 
the  forces  existent  in  God's  creation.  Most 
evidently,  except  for  sheer  contradictories  of 
facts  already  fully  ascertained,  it  lies  within  no 
man's  province  to  say  that  any  imaginable 
thing  is  not  possible.  The  only  hypothesis  re- 
quired to  bring  any  miracle  of  the  Bible  within 
the  field  of  law  is  to  suppose  that  the  mind 
directing  the  miracle  was  aware  of,  and  could 
command,  some  force  not  available  to  a  mind  on 
the  human  plane  of  that  given  time.  And  from 
the  premises  of  the  Bible-story  that  hypothesis  is 
reasonable.  The  Scriptures  do  not  tax  us  to  be- 
lieve tales  of  black  art  wrought  by  other  men  on 
strength  of  their  own  occult  information.     Every 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  89 

miracle  of  the  word  of  God  is  based  on  the 
personal  will  and  action  of  the  Creator  or  of  His 
appointed  Representative  in  the  world,  Jesus 
Christ.  Is  it  irrational  to  assume  that  a  divine 
Governor  of  "  this  universal  frame "  knows 
powers  and  possibiHties  contained  within  it 
which  His  ever-learning  creatures  have  not  yet 
discovered?  Or  is  there  improbability  in  con- 
ceiving that  His  Messenger  commissioned  to  the 
world  shared  in  that  larger  and  divine  knowl- 
edge ?  Even  though  we  should  consent  to  con- 
sider that  Christ's  emptying  of  Himself — the 
"  kenosis  " — deprived  Him  in  His  earthly  Hfe  of 
both  omniscience  and  omnipotence,  it  is  still 
common  sense  to  believe  that  He  must  have  re- 
tained all  supernatural  endowment  practically 
useful  to  His  mission — the  skill  of  miracles 
among  other  skills  if  miracles  could  be  service- 
able to  His  purposes  and  God's. 

The  miracles  of  Christ  would  not  be  "ex- 
plained away  "  but  rather  certified  if  the  laws  by 
which  they  were  accomplished  should  later  come 
to  light  in  human  discovery.  It  begins  to  be 
said  on  some  hands  that  the  Lord  did  works  of 
healing  by  that  mysterious  means  which  modern 
medical  men  are  just  now  coming  to  recognize — 
the  power  of  mental  suggestion.  Not  all  of  the 
cures  effected  by  the  Lord  are  open  to  this  ex- 
planation, but  certain  of  them  may  be.  And  it 
would  in  no  wise  class  Christ  as  a  charlatan  hypno- 


90  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

tist  to  admit  His  use  of  psychic  force  to  destroy 
bodily  disease ;  it  would  rather  be  an  indirect 
proof  of  His  divine  origin  i{  it  should  thus  ap- 
pear that  by  independent  knowledge  He  could 
seize  upon  and  put  to  a  proper,  beneficent  use  a 
law  which  nineteen  centuries  later  mere  human 
minds  still  discern  but  dimly  and  .^mploy  mostly 
in  insincere,  mountebank  fashion.)  And  it  may 
yet  remain  for  scientific  research  to  reveal  other 
laws  and  operations  through  which  He  worked 
others  of  His  profounder  wonders.  It  would  not 
in  the  least  detract  from  His  unique  position  in 
His  own  age  and  place  if,  following  long  eras  after, 
men  tardily  should  succeed  in  duplicating  some 
of  the  deeds  of  Jesus.  The  groping  of  science 
in  that  direction  is  to  be  neither  feared  nor  re- 
sented, even  though,  as  is  most  unlikely  and  yet 
is  to  be  contemplated  with  perfect  equanimity,  it 
should  result  in  making  manifest  the  secret  of 
the  premier  miracle  of  all — the  making  of  life. 
The  chemistry  of  foods,  completely  comprehended, 
might  very  possibly  cover  a  process  that  would 
make  water  into  wine  in  the  midst  of  an  open 
jar  as  well  as  beneath  the  purple  skin  of  the  grape. 
Perhaps  the  growth  principle  in  the  seed  does 
not  altogether  forfeit  its  mystic  potentiality  when 
it  passes  into  bread ;  it  might  be  that  multiply- 
ing the  loaves  was  as  scientific  as  sowing  the 
seed.  And  as  for  the  stupendous  miracle  of 
Christ's  resurrection,  it  is  expressly  taught  in  the 


The  Possibility  of  Miracle  91 

Bible  that  this  was  but  the  prior  application  of  a 
law  which  is  yet  to  become  appHcable  to  the 
whole  human  race.  And  men  who  believe  that 
God  has  a  power  of  creating  ought  not  to  make 
difficulty  over  allowing  Him  a  power  of  re- 
creating. 

By  such  argument  I  would  defend  the  propo- 
sition that  there  lies  against  the  miraculousness  of 
the  Bible  no  a  priori  impossibility.  The  consid- 
eration remains  whether  the  specific  miracles 
therein  reported  are  plausible  in  detail.  To  that 
large  and  still  more  crucial  phase  of  the  subject 
it  seems  better  to  devote  another  chapter. 


IV 

The  Probability  of  Miracles 


IV 

THE  PROBABILITY  OF  MIRACLES 

To  show  that  God  can  do  miracles  is  not,  of 
course,  to  show  that  He  ever  has  done  a  miracle. 
Indeed,  the  platform  of  many  rationaHsts  lies 
just  here — that  the  miraculous  is  possible  enough 
but  as  a  matter  of  fact  has  never  appeared ;  that 
the  faultless  theory  has  nothing  to  substantiate  it 
in  actual  event.  And  candour  will  admit  that  cer- 
tain presumptions  stand  against  all  miracle  nar- 
ratives which  affirmative  reasons  must  overcome 
before  such  stories  can  be  rationally  accepted. 
The  preceding  chapter  was  itself  in  large  part 
an  attempt  to  establish  a  presumption  against 
frequent  and  promiscuous  miracle  in  God's  world. 
There  was  besides  confessed  the  inertia  of  ex- 
perience, which  drives  our  natural  expectation  of 
the  future  along  the  straight  line  of  all  that  we 
have  most  familiarly  seen  and  heard  heretofore. 
Reflexively  the  same  disposition  inclines  us  to 
believe  from  the  past  whatever  moves  most 
nearly  in  the  same  plane  with  present  common- 
places. And  perhaps  more  suggestive  of  skep- 
ticism than  all  else  is.  the  suspicion  which  we 
have  learned  to  entertain  of  the  credulity  of  the 
95 


96  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

elder  races.  All  reading  men  know  how  cruder 
ages  than  our  own  have  been  wont  to  frame 
half-reverent,  half-affrighted  accounts,  all  sur- 
charged with  mystery,  respecting  events  to  them 
unusual,  finding  it  easier  to  attribute  a  strange 
happening  to  supernatural  influence  than  to  in- 
vestigate its  real  causes. 

By  reason  of  these  obstacles  to  belief,  I  feel 
obliged  without  debate  to  confess  that  it  is 
quite  out  of  the  question  to  advance  at  this  late 
day  indubitable  and  conclusive  evidence  of  any 
one  miraculous  incident  in  Scripture.  To  say 
this  is  not  to  "  give  the  whole  case  away." 
The  same  thing  might  be  said  of  almost  any  in- 
cident of  secular  history  torn  apart  from  its 
connection.  Historians  do  not  floor  their 
readers  with  "  knock-down  arguments "  ;  they 
hold  to  lines  of  probability  and  win  belief  by 
accumulation  of  Hkelihoods.  The  signing  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  can  be  demon- 
strated; the  original  document  exists  to  prove 
it.  So  also  some  of  the  oldest  history  of  the 
world  is  proved  by  documents — in  stone,  in 
clay  and  on  buried  papyri.  But  most  of  what 
we  know  of  the  human  story  has  been  learned 
through  much  more  precarious  transmission  in 
manuscripts,  themselves  transient.  The  Bible 
shares  this  uncertainty  of  manuscript  succession 
without  signed,  sealed  and  surviving  proofs. 
Those    portions  of    Scripture  which    approach 


The  Probability  of  Miracles        97 

most  nearly  the  documentary  character  as  to 
their  contents  and  contemporary  production, — 
the  epistles  of  Paul  being  the  striking  ex- 
amples,— are  not  historical  in  cast.  Thus  even 
ordinary  events  in  the  Bible  we  may  not  term 
demonstrable  in  a  mathematical  sense, — much 
less  miraculous  events. 

But  all  this  by  no  means  puts  away  full,  faith- 
ful, rational  belief  from  the  Bible  narrative,  either 
as  to  its  natural  or  as  to  its  supernatural  features. 
It  is  perhaps  with  a  wiser  phrase  than  we  ap- 
preciate that  at  times  we  say  of  things  not  posi- 
tively provable  that  they  are  "  morally  certain." 
There  is  undoubtedly  a  disciplinary  moral  effect 
in  the  open  choice  of  truth,  where  opposing 
possibilities  are  to  be  balanced  and  the  decision 
for  the  more  probable  is  partially  influenced  by 
a  love  of  the  nobler  and  grander  alternative  in 
believing.  At  least  it  is  not  conceivable  that  a 
quality  of  character  has  been  added  to  a  man 
when  he  adopts  a  proposition  in  geometry  which 
he  simply  could  not  deny  unless  he  was  ready 
for  a  madhouse.  Religious  faith  is  a  more  live, 
more  voluntary  thing  than  that.  And  it  is  a  more 
than  superficial  suggestion  that  herein  may  lie 
the  very  reason  why  religious  truth,  historical  or 
theological,  is  never  presented  to  men  in  a  fashion 
to  compel  acceptance.  The  compulsion  would  de- 
stroy the  live  assimilating  power  of  the  soul. 
Therefore,  to  grant  that  single  incidents  of  scrip- 


gS  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

tural  history  cannot  be  set  beyond  doubt  does  not 
admit  that  they  must  fall  short  of  "  moral  cer- 
tainty." Taken  not  singly  but  collectively,  not  as 
arithmetical  problems  but  as  pictures  of  life,  not 
for  idle  tales  of  imagination  but  for — what  they 
purport  to  be — a  serious  effort  to  expHcate  God's 
relations  to  mankind,  the  chapters  of  the  Bible 
story  rise  by  degrees  of  cumulative  dignity  to  a 
point  where  their  total  effect  challenges  the 
honest  heart — not  irresistibly  but  with  the  power 
of  a  mighty  spiritual  magnetism — to  come  and 
take  them  for  its  creed  and  counsel.  Over 
against  those  anti- miracle  presumptions  which 
have  been  so  freely  confessed,  there  rise,  when 
the  whole  Bible  is  taken  in  evidence,  a  number 
of  distinct  elements  of  likelihood  that  seem  ample 
to  turn  the  scale.  To  avoid  an  appearance  of 
special  pleading,  let  us  enumerate  seriatim  con- 
siderations to  which  a  candid  man  would  natu- 
rally look  to  determine  whether  any  narrative — 
in  itself  of  an  improbable  sound — was  supported 
to  his  credence  by  circumstances  external  to  it 
or  purposes  tacitly  implied  in  it.  Any  of  the 
following  observations  would  help  to  confirm  it : 
I.  A  high  moral  and  intellectual  standard  in 
the  literature  bearing  the  story  would  inspire  be- 
lief. Superstitious  and  false  records  of  contact 
with  divinity  presuppose  a  low  degree  of  spiritual 
perception  ;  wild  and  preposterous  traditions  live 
among  peoples  of  crude  mental  perception.     A 


The  Probability  of  Miracles         99 

book  which  reveals  the  deficiency  of  its  authors 
in  these  respects  and  suggests  the  childish  dis- 
position to  revel  in  imagination  of  fairies  and 
goblins,  may  well  be  suspected  of  dealing  with 
tales  of  vagary  when  it  penetrates  wonderland. 
But  if  the  reader  has  come  upon  a  book  which 
is  boldly  marked  with  lofty  spiritual  ideas  of  God, 
— a  conception  of  His  majesty  that  would  logically 
put  Him  far  aloof  from  the  minor  matters  of  man- 
kind,— then  reports  therein  contained  that  He 
descended  to  appear  among  men  and  engage  in 
miraculous  labours  for  their  benefit  take  on  an 
aspect  different  from  the  mere  myth-spinning 
of  maudlin  grandsires  in  barbarian  desert  camps. 
A  volume  which  shows  divine  largeness — mighty 
hymns  to  a  spiritual  Creator  ruling  the  universe 
and  preparing  men  for  high  destinies  by  stupen- 
dous means ;  pure  prayers  of  aspiration  lifted  up 
not  to  bestial  or  licentious  deities  but  to  a  holy 
and  infinite  King;  a  theology  revealing  a  Friend 
and  Father  for  men,  viewless  to  the  eyes  but 
present  to  the  heart, — a  book  of  these  sublime 
contents  is  not  the  product  of  weak  and  trivial 
mental  powers  on  which  the  fancies  and  follies 
of  superstition  might  endlessly  impose.  It  is  not 
a  hodge-podge  of  savage  tradition  on  the  one 
hand  nor  an  anthology  of  imaginative,  poetic 
myth  on  the  other.  A  great  grave  book  of  re- 
ligion must  be  seriously  taken ;  if  it  shows  a 
sense  of  dealing  with '  a  mighty  theme,  it  may 


loo         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

not  rudely  be  affronted  with  charges  of  having 
brought  debased  materials  to  serve  its  exalted 
intention.  Character  backs  the  testimony  of  a 
book  as  it  does  the  witness  of  a  man. 

2.  A  general  sanity  of  view  respecting  the 
common  things  of  life  establishes  strong  reason 
for  credence  in  occasional  reports  of  things  ex- 
traordinary. Writings  that  are  amazed  at  all 
that  happens  are  scarcely  good  reporters  of  things 
that  should  rightfully  amaze.  Where  one  reads 
continually  of  elves  and  sprites  dwelling  in  the 
forests,  nymphs  and  mermaids  disporting  in  the 
fountains  and  the  seas,  gods  and  goddesses 
batthng  in  the  mountains  and  the  clouds,  nothing 
can  possibly  impress  him  as  reflecting  reality  in 
the  midst  of  so  much  unreal.  ■  History  that  turns 
on  signs,  horoscopes,  divinations  or  ghostly  ap- 
pearances betrays  a  self-evident  bias  towards 
supernatural  in  preference  to  natural  explana- 
tions of  events,  and  is  in  consequence  self-dis- 
credited. But  in  a  library  of  manuscripts  which 
accept  the  customary  order  of  phenomena  as 
wrought  by  natural — though  divinely  guided — 
forces,  the  chapters  detailing  phenomena  not  so 
wrought  are  plainly  not  vitiated  by  any  such  bias. 
Here  is  no  expectation  of  being  astonished  mo- 
mentarily by  the  descent  of  a  divinity  from  the 
machine  above  ;  no  pressure  to  keep  up  a  certain 
ratio  of  superhuman  episodes.  In  manuscripts 
of  this  tempered  sort,  impartial  towards  unmirac- 


The  Probability  of  Miracles        loi 

ulous  cause  and  effect,  such  miraculous  marvels 
as  are  reported  suffer  no  depreciation.  They  are 
at  least  not  brought  forth  by  a  preinclination  to 
wonders.  These  sober  reports  can  indeed  be 
fairly  credited  with  a  positive  claim  upon  belief 
by  sheer  reason  of  this  internal  plausibility.  If 
they  were  invented  stories,  they  could  scarcely 
fail  to  run  to  the  unrestrained  riot  of  pagan  myth- 
ology. 

3.  A  clear  bill  of  unselfishness,  when  it  can 
be  accorded  to  writers  reporting  miracles,  adds 
vastly  to  the  believableness  of  their  histories. 
It  is  familiarly  known  how  many  men  have  tried 
to  make  the  multitudes  accept  their  claims  of 
supernatural  power  and  have  later  revealed  the 
animus  of  their  self-advertising  by  using  to  their 
own  personal  profit  the  faith  in  themselves 
which  they  succeeded  in  awaking.  But  a  record 
of  much  greater  wonders  will  commend  itself  to 
far  readier  and  more  considerate  attention,  if  it 
shall  appear  that  no  participant  in  these  miracu- 
lous occurrences  nor  any  historian  of  them  had 
anything  to  gain  of  selfish  advantage,  emolu- 
ment or  luxury  by  having  them  become  known 
abroad.  In  such  a  case  the  only  motive  that  is 
supposable  is  the  motive  of  enthusiasm  for  the 
truth  and  the  hope  that  the  knowledge  of  the 
truth  may  bring  useful  aid  in  living  to  other 
men.  It  is  not  impossible  of  course  that  honest 
men  may  be  mistaken,  but  the  writing  of  an 


102         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

honest,  philanthropic  and  unambitious  man 
is  far  more  to  be  relied  upon — this  is  the 
simplest  of  moral  axioms — than  what  is  said  by 
one  to  whom  these  virtues  could  not  be  heartily 
and  quickly  attributed.  And  if  a  number  of  such 
selfless  men,  taking  up  a  common  theme  from 
varying  points  of  original  interest,  should  agree 
in  the  general  terms  of  separate  individual  testi- 
mony, their  consensus  becomes  convincing 
enough  to  avail  in  the  court  of  history, — not  to 
say,  in  a  court  of  law.  So  too,  if  on  matters  not 
contemporary  in  time  but  connected  by  a  linking 
of  identical  purpose,  a  successive  line  of  witnesses, 
all  above  reproach  for  sinister  designs,  agree  har- 
moniously as  to  the  miraculous  religious  ele- 
ments involved,  it  is  easier  to  believe  that  they 
are  telling  the  truth  than  that  from  century  to 
century  they  have  adhered  to  the  same  form  of 
misrepresentation. 

4.  Finally,  the  preeminent  test  for  the  reality 
of  a  miracle  story  lies  in  the  question  whether  it 
covers  an  occasion  and  circumstances  that  de- 
mand a  departure  from  the  ordinary  processes  of 
nature.  The  course  of  argument  which  we  have 
been  following  is  all  based  upon  the  principle 
that  nature  is  by  divine  ordering  made  sufficient 
for  all  usual  needs  of  men  and  conjunctures  of 
history ;  that  other  processes  than  those  of 
nature  are  to  be  expected  only  when  a  condition 
emerges  to  which  the  routine  of  the  universe  is 


The  Probability  of  Miracles       103 

not  adequate.  The  major  premise  laid  down  is 
that  God  may  perform  a  miracle  whenever  He 
will,  but  that  as  matter  of  fact  He  will  perform 
none  unless  His  purpose  in  hand  is  otherwise  un- 
attainable. The  reasoning  is,  of  course,  induc- 
tive from  observation  rather  than  deductive  from 
revelation.  But  to  one  who  accepts  the  sound- 
ness of  the  principle  the  clinching  claim  of  a 
miracle  to  be  believed  appears  when  reason  is 
shown  for  surmising  that  it  was  essential  to  some 
certain  great  object  in  the  counsels  of  the  Lord 
Jehovah.  If  we  once  can  eliminate  the  suspi- 
cion of  caprice  and  sleight-of-hand  exhibition  from 
any  given  marvel,  we  have  brought  it  to  a  place 
where  the  intellect  may  receive  it  with  entire  con- 
sistency. 

Thus  we  return  once  more  to  specific  inquiry 
— whether  the  Bible  as  a  whole  fulfills  the  first 
three  conditions  of  credibility  and  its  narrations 
of  miracle  the  last.  The  former  division  of  this 
question  I  do  not  think  it  needful  to  debate. 
There  can  certainly  be  no  denial  of  the  unique 
spiritual  exaltation  of  the  Scriptures,  the  com- 
mon-sense naturalism  of  its  estimate  of  every-day 
phenomena,  and  the  unselfishness  of  its  procla- 
mations and  evangel.  So  far  from  seeking  to  at- 
tain advantage  through  His  many  benevolent 
services  to  His  countrymen,  the  Master  continu- 
ally strove  to  prevent  the  wide  advertisement  of 
His     kindness.      And    His    disciples    were    as 


104         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

entirely  free  from  serving  their  own  individual  in- 
terests. Not  only  are  these  things  evident,  but  I 
judge  there  will  be  equal  consent  to  the  proposi- 
tion that  the  four  evangelists  are  in  harmony  as 
viritnessing  conjointly  to  the  miraculous  character 
of  the  Saviour's  ministry,  and  that  the  Bible 
authors  in  general  from  first  to  last  present 
mutually  corroborative  pictures  of  the  Creator's 
providential  and  potentially  miraculous  relations 
to  His  people.  The  strength  of  such  agreeing 
historic  evidence  may  therefore  be  claimed  with 
assurance  on  the  side  of  the  miracles. 

The  other  matter — whether  the  miracle  ac- 
counts appear  in  such  times,  places  and  relations 
as  imperatively  demand  supernatural  action,  nat- 
ural action  being  obviously  insufficient — is  a  val- 
uation of  circumstances  which  each  man  must 
make  for  himself  if  he  is  to  feel  the  weight  of  the 
persuasion.  It  is  a  sort  of  matter  on  which  con- 
viction of  the  truth  is  not  readily  conveyed  from 
one  mind  to  another.  To  set  the  balances 
squarely,  however,  it  must  be  recognized  that 
with  God  moral  ends  are,  by  essence  of  the  case, 
quite  as  compelling  as  any  physical  aims, — 
doubtless  we  should  say  far  more  compelling. 
We  can  imagine  that  God  would  call  greater 
forces  into  play  to  make  a  good  man  than  to 
save  a  sun  from  wreck.  And  it  is  likewise  to  be 
held  in  consideration,  for  due  reserve  of  our 
estimates,  that  we  can  never  be  sure  of  sufficient 


The  Probability  of  Miracles        105 

data  to  calculate  the  necessity  that  moves  God. 
The  calculation  of  likelihoods  in  the  miracles 
must  self-evidently  count  more  strongly  for  af- 
firmative than  for  negative  conclusions.  When 
one  finds  himself  coming  out  to  a  negative  an- 
swer, he  is  obliged  to  admit  that  the  appearance 
of  the  matter  might  be  vastly  different  if  he 
knew  more  of  antecedents  and  particularly  more 
of  consequents.  I  must  honestly  confess  that 
there  are  some  stories  of  wonders  in  the  Bible 
which  do  not  appeal  to  me  as  necessary  in  the 
sense  which  I  am  here  trying  to  define,  and  I  do 
not  therefore  feel  assured  of  them  specifically  in 
the  degree  which  I  should  gladly  attain  as  cor- 
responding to  my  general  confidence  in  the  Bible. 
Such  are  some  of  the  miracles  in  the  career  of 
Elisha  and  the  uncanny  experience  of  Saul  in  the 
house  of  the  witch  at  Endor.  I  mention  these 
particular  examples  of  my  own  difficulty  both 
with  the  desire  to  be  as  candid  as  honourable 
discussion  demands,  and  with  the  further  intent 
of  pointing  out  how  these  incidents  are  of  a  sort 
and  class  which  are  not  characteristic  of  the  Bible, 
being,  as  far  as  the  record  gives  a  clue,  what  Peter 
would  call  "  of  private  interpretation,"  and  not 
manifestly  involved  with  the  advance  of  the  king- 
dom of  God.  For  myself  I  should  not  expect 
the  Lord  to  save  me  the  expense  of  replacing  a 
borrowed  ax-head  that  I  had  lost,  but  I  have  to 
admit  that  I  do  not  know  what  long  chain  of 


lo6         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

disastrous  results  might  have  followed  in  the  col- 
lege of  the  prophets  if  the  careless  young  man 
had  been  unable  to  return  that  particular  ax. 
And  I  must  certainly  confess  utter  ignorance  of 
the  necessity  which  called  a  chariot  of  fire  from 
heaven  to  wing  Elijah  past  the  mouth  of  the 
sepulchre  and  away  bodily  to  an  invisible  world. 
But  the  mass  of  the  miracles  of  Scripture  can 
be  placed  in  striking  contrast  with  such  as  these, 
evidencing  on  their  face  certain  considerable  pur- 
poses in  view  of  which  they  were  wrought.  A 
large  field  of  Bible-study  here  awaits  painstaking 
work, — the  careful  review  one  by  one  of  the 
supernatural  interventions  which  the  Book  re- 
cords, with  the  object  of  tracing  in  each  the  con- 
dition of  crisis  to  which  as  an  extraordinary 
emergency  measure  it  answered.  In  some  cases 
perhaps  it  might  be  needful  to  associate  a  train 
of  miracles  before  there  appeared  a  purpose  con- 
trolling and  unifying  all;  but  on  the  whole,  I 
believe,  there  would  be  very  small  area  in  which 
this  analysis  would  yield  no  results  accrediting 
the  Scriptures.  Take  the  great  disciplinary 
period  of  the  Israelitish  tribes  when  they  were  set 
free  from  their  Egyptian  bondage;  it  was  not 
physically  necessary  to  lead  them  through  the 
Red  Sea  in  order  to  bring  them  to  Canaan,  but 
evidently  there  was  a  strategic  importance  in 
putting  behind  them  a  barrier  past  which  they 
could  not  retreat.     And  more  than  that,  there 


The  Probability  of  Miracles        107 

was  a  religious  importance  in  giving  to   such 
debased  and  blunted  serf-peasantry  a  demonstra- 
tion of  the  reality  of  the  invisible  Jehovah  which 
they  could  comprehend  and  which  would  educate 
them  to  more  spiritual  conceptions  of  Him.     To 
such  end  also  served  all  the  awesome  manifesta- 
tions at  Sinai.     The  water  and  the  food  provided 
in  the  desert  were  physically  necessary.     And 
all  of  these  miracles  crowded  one  upon  another 
not  merely  because  it  was  a  critical  and  turning 
hour  in  the  annals  of  a  then  unknown  nation  but 
because  there  was  at  stake  the  prime  world-scheme 
of  God — His  purpose  to  construct  in  the  midst 
of  this  people  (refractory  material  but  the  best  at 
hand)  an  incandescent  spiritual  centre  whence 
truth  and  salvation  were  to  radiate  to  all  the  rest 
of  mankind.     The  whole  scheme  was  constantly 
imperilled  by  the  uncertain  conditions  of  this 
transitional  time,  and  when  either  the  physical 
survival  or  the  spiritual  integrity  of  these  closely 
guarded  tribes  was  in  danger,  God  hurried  to  the 
rescue  with  any  and  every  available  means  of 
precaution.     For  which  reason  miracle  is  specially 
heaped   together   on   those  Pentateuchal  pages 
that  relate  the  Israelitish  wanderings. 

In  connection  with  the  same  divine  enterprise, 
pursued  from  century  to  century,  it  often  became 
imperative  to  support  individual  leaders  among 
"a  disobedient  and  gainsaying  people"  with 
special  signs  and  assurances.     These  superficially 


lo8         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

are  individual  miracles,  but  really  they  are  na- 
tional. Moses  was  granted  a  sight  of  the  burn- 
ing bush,  and  Gideon  was  indulged  in  his  request 
for  the  sign  of  the  fleeces  wet  and  dry,  not  for 
their  own  sakes,  but  to  strengthen  them  in  their 
people's  service.  Elijah's  success  on  Mount  Car- 
mel  came  at  a  time  when  true  religion  would 
probably  have  utterly  perished  from  the  true  re- 
ligious centre  of  the  world  except  for  some  loan 
of  miraculous  aid  to  the  sole  preacher  of  Jehovah. 
The  occasion  was  certainly  desperate  enough  to 
justify  the  most  heroic  remedies.  Of  the  mira- 
cles that  attended  our  Lord's  ministry  something 
has  been  said  already,  and  something  remains  to 
be  said  in  a  chapter  to  come.  Here  it  suffices 
simply  to  point  out  that  the  earth-Hfe  of  Christ 
marked  the  climax  of  that  world-plan  whose  un- 
folding had  been  attended  by  wonders ;  the  cul- 
mination might  naturally  be  expected  to  be  an 
hour  of  still  mightier  works.  The  necessity  for 
Christ's  miracles  was  doubtless  subjective  in  the 
minds  of  those  to  whom  He  came ;  although  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  even  we  should  be 
able  to  read  in  His  life  all  the  abundance  of  the 
Father's  loving  kindness  if  His  best  deeds  of 
mercy  had  not  overrun  the  limit  of  our  human 
inabilities.  Miracles  attending  the  founding  of 
the  church  seem  to  have  continued  as  long  as  the 
conditions  of  gospel  propaganda  required  them. 
When  Christianity  had  become  so  well  estab- 


The  Probability  of  Miracles        109 

lished  in  the  hearts  of  men,  that  spiritual  expe- 
rience had  risen  to  be  an  impregnable  base  of  its 
operations,  the  cruder  external  signs  which 
bolstered  up  a  semi-materialistic  faith  passed 
away,  and  the  more  substantial  form  of  soul  trust, 
rooted  in  an  invisible  fellowship  with  God,  took 
and  held  a  stronger  place. 

This  line  of  apologetic,  however,  does  not 
assume  that  "  the  age  of  miracles  is  past."  On 
the  contrary,  though  recognizing  the  presump- 
tion that  non-natural  wonders  are  less  probable 
now  than  once,  this  logic  implies  that  wherever 
old  conditions  recurred  to-day,  the  old  miracles 
would  recur.  I  am  not  prepared  to  deny  all  re- 
ported modern  miracles  at  a  sweep.  Quite 
otherwise,  I  would  accept  any  miracle  of  any 
date  for  which  the  moral  certainty  rises  as  high 
as  in  the  Bible  account.  But  the  condition  from 
which  the  miracle  came,  and  the  rationality  and 
largeness  of  effect  towards  which  it  looked, 
would  weigh  more  for  plausibility  than  any 
amount  of  individual  testimony.  I  do  not  at 
the  present  moment  fix  on  any  post-biblical 
miracle  in  which  I  should  express  belief,  al- 
though it  seems  to  me  that  many  of  the  so- 
called  "  fortunate  chances "  on  which  history 
has  turned  for  lasting  good, — as  the  dispersion 
of  the  Spanish  Armada  by  singularly  opportune 
storms, — are  essentially  miraculous,  even  though 
accomplished  by  invocation  of  entirely  familiar 


no         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

laws.  As  has  been  remarked  before,  the  door 
of  providence  opens  directly  into  the  hall  of 
miracle. 

The  saying  so  bitterly  resented  by  many — that 
miracles  do  not  help  the  modern  man  to  have 
faith — I  have  no  hesitation  to  admit.  In  fact,  it 
appears  to  follow  from  the  principles  of  miracle 
which  have  here  been  written  out.  A  miracle  is 
an  evidence  to  the  eyes;  its  prime  evidential 
value  is  by  nature  of  the  case  for  eye-witnesses 
only.  Unlike  a  proof  addressed  to  the  reason, 
it  cannot  be  transmitted  in  its  full  force  by  words 
either  spoken  or  written.  Even  at  the  first  re- 
move from  the  actual  seeing  of  it,  a  miraculous 
event  has  lost  vastly  from  its  convincing  power. 
The  witness  perceived  at  a  glance ;  the  hearer  at 
second-hand  must  summon  his  powers  of  judg- 
ment to  weigh  and  decide  whether  the  report  is 
believable.  And  except  for  the  incarnation  and 
resurrection  of  Christ,^ — which  involve  certain 
outcomes  reaching  down  to  the  present  day, — I 
do  not  think  any  of  the  Bible  miracles  were 
wrought  with  any  purpose  of  transmitting  evi- 
dence to  a  later  time ;  they  were  done  for  the 
help  of  the  persons,  few  or  many,  immediately 
present.  If  as  has  been  here  held,  we  have 
come  to  a  time  in  the  evolution  of  religion  where 
new  miracles  are  not  required  for  proving  the 
gospel,  evidently  we  have  as  little  present  need 
for  proof  arising  from  the  old  miracles.     The 


The  Probability  of  Miracles        1 1 1 

reason  of  the  preservation  of  the  miracle  stories 
in  Scripture  is,  therefore,  not  to  sustain  our 
present  faith  but  to  afford  us  a  true  history  of 
what  God's  workings  have  been  in  the  past.  It 
was  the  fidelity  of  the  record,  not  the  progress 
of  belief,  which  was  at  stake  when  these  stories 
of  marvel  were  committed  to  writing ;  and  our 
reverent  reading  of  them  is  important  just  as  our 
reading  of  all  history  is  important,  teaching  us 
to  understand  from  what  has  been  what  now  is. 
It  is  not  therefore  an  occasion  of  distress  to  the 
faithful,  but  the  condition  inevitable — indeed, 
desirable — that  to-day  men  should  be  found  not 
believing  in  Jesus  Christ  because  of  the  miracles, 
but — as  in  fact  the  most  orthodox  of  us  do — in 
the  miracles  because  of  Jesus  Christ. 

The  man  who,  because  he  feels  incapable 
of  believing  the  miracles,  patiently  goes  to 
work  to  sever  the  miraculous  element  in  the 
Bible  from  its  moral  and  spiritual  teachings,  in 
order  that  he  may  believe  this  remainder,  has 
my  sympathetic  regard.  I  am  glad  to  see  him 
making  such  attempt  rather  than  casting  the 
whole  of  the  Bible  away  together  as  utterly  ref- 
use. I  am  happy  to  perceive  that  his  cherished 
remainder  is  as  large  as  it  is,  and  that  his  ac- 
ceptance of  it  has  such  character-power  in  his 
life.  Yet  though  I  will  praise  him  for  having 
done  so  well  with  the  Bible,  I  will  not  praise  him 
as  having  done  the  best.     I  will  not  grant  his 


1 1 2         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

plea  if  he  argues  it  is  better  for  us  all  to  drop 
the  miracles  from  consideration  and  proceed 
hereafter  to  the  teaching  of  the  world  as  if  there 
were  no  "  powers  "  or  signs  in  history.  It  is  too 
much  for  him  to  assume  that  his  difficulty  is  a 
prevalent  difficulty, — his  disability  of  belief  uni- 
versal. For  myself  I  am  anxious  to  believe  as 
much  as  is  really  true  in  the  world ;  it  would  be 
a  loss  not  to  believe  anything  that  ought  to  be 
believed.  Not  all  truth  is  necessary  for  life  but 
all  truth  is  worth  accepting.  Agnosticism — con- 
fessed, satisfied  agnosticism — shall  not  prevent 
my  following  on  to  know  as  much  as  I  am  able. 
Doubtless,  I  shall  not  often  have  positive  knowl- 
edge to  guide  me,  but  where  I  see  the  gleam  of 
the  brightest  light,  I  shall  at  least  pursue  in  hope 
of  greater  light.  And  if  those  who  prefer  the 
more  trodden  paths  of  common  human  experi- 
ence do  consider  themselves  closer  companions 
of  a  logical  reason,  perchance  it  shall  be  my 
compensation  to  carry  in  my  heart  more  of  the 
past  and  present  wonder  of  God. 


V 

The  Miracle  of  Jesus 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  JESUS 

The  most  elaborate  and  connected — indeed, 
one  might  say,  the  only — attempt  in  the  Scrip- 
tures to  exhibit  the  rationale  of  a  divine  incarna- 
tion, is  included  in  the  first  chapter  of  the 
Gospel  of  John.  As  I  attempt  to  translate  the 
argument  from  mystic  oriental  philosophizing  to 
plainer  occidental  logic,  it  takes  on  for  me  a 
mightily  convincing  quality.  It  certainly  makes 
the  idea  of  incarnation  intellectually  plausible. 
The  following  I  judge  to  be  a  fair  paraphrase 
into  modern  terms  of  reasoning : 

From  all  primal  eternity  the  self-existing  God 
put  forth  the  Expression  of  Himself.  He  craved 
to  do  works  that  would  make  Himself  known — 
as  all  personality  must  according  to  the  very 
nature  of  personality.  Therefore  to  declare 
God's  infinite  power  and  wisdom  the  Expression 
of  Him  created  all  the  universal  order  of  suns 
and  satellites.  Then,  in  order  that  what  was  ex- 
pressed might  become  complete  in  being  known, 
He  peopled  at  least  one  world  with  conscious 
and  cognizant  lives.  These  sentient  creatures 
were  themselves  a  part  of  what  was  made  mani- 
fest concerning  God,  being  not  only  the  superla- 
1^5 


Il6  Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

tive  tokens  of  His  power  but  also  essential 
replicas  of  His  own  spiritual  individuality. 
Their  gifts  of  soul  and  mind  were  all  endow- 
ments which  the  divine  Expression  shared  with 
them  as  revealings  of  God ;  all  their  lights  were 
kindled  from  the  one  everlasting  Light.  But  the 
great  tragedy  and  pity  of  creation  was  that 
neither  from  the  wonder  of  their  own  souls  nor 
from  the  goodliness  of  the  embodied  frame  of 
matter  did  men  learn  to  perceive  the  revelation 
that  God  eternally  longed  to  make.  Age  after 
age  they  plodded  on  through  the  world  all  un- 
hearing  the  Voice  that  spoke  to  them  out  of 
every  kind  of  existence.  Yet  never  was  the 
divine  Expression  silent  or  invisible;  still  on 
every  man  born  into  the  world  He  bestowed 
heavenly  affinities,  and  still  throughout  the  world 
He  shed  the  light  which  to  seeing  eyes  would  a 
"  great  Original  proclaim." 

But  at  length  the  eternal  Father  was  no  longer 
content  to  seek  the  understanding  of  men 
through  the  message  of  the  creation  alone  nor 
merely  through  the  consciousness  of  the  human 
soul.  He  would  go  farther;  His  yearning  Ex- 
pression He  would  embody  in  the  clear  form  of 
manhood  ;  the  Forth-Speaking  of  Himself  should 
become  flesh.  So  the  divine  PersonaHty  ap- 
peared in  the  world  a  human  Person — the  ulti- 
mate possibility  in  the  stupendous  enterprise  of 
making  known  to  mankind  the  nature  of  God. 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  1 1 7 

This  was  the  plainest,  simplest,  most  complete 
epiphany  of  which  the  Expression  of  divinity 
was  capable,  and  in  this  epiphany  He  dwelt 
familiarly  with  the  humblest  of  men  so  that  they 
might  know  Him  heart  to  heart  as  friend  is 
known  by  friend.  Such  was — almost  so  to  say 
— the  extravagance  of  God's  eagerness  for 
acquaintance  with  humanity.  But  the  greater 
tragedy  waited  for  this  greater  manifestation. 
When  the  Holy  Expression  clothed  in  flesh 
entered  into  the  domain  of  His  own  earthly 
works,  though  all  lesser  things  recognized  their 
Lord,  the  men  whom  He  came  especially  to  woo 
not  only  knew  Him  not  as  the  Messenger  of 
Jehovah  but  utterly  spurned  the  loving  advances 
of  His  friendship.  Yet  a  few  did  accept  Him 
and  attend  to  His  message,  and  these  learned 
from  His  teaching  a  blessed  secret.  He  lifted 
them  up  into  a  nearer  and  sweeter  relation  to 
God  than  they  had  ever  dared  to  imagine; 
He  taught  them  to  see  in  themselves  not  the  mere 
creatures  of  an  ineffable  Power,  but  the  royal 
sons  of  a  kingly  Father.  By  the  gentle  Expres- 
sion thus  led  on  from  truth  to  truth,  they  entered 
into  rights  of  fellowship  with  God  whence 
they  drew  a  life  of  more  than  human  strength 
with  joys  of  nobler  than  earthly  origin.  Day  by 
day  their  communion  with  God's  Expression  re- 
vealed in  Him  a  wondrous  fullness  of  gracious 
virtues  which  joined  with   His  perfect  truthful- 


ii8         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

ness  to  make  a  character  of  such  glory  as  they 
instinctively  felt  to  be  the  mirror  of  deity.  Bet- 
ter than  all,  as  they  associated  with  Him, — and 
since  He  had  gone  away,  as  they  tried  to  be 
loyal  to  Him, — they  dared  to  say  that  little  by 
little  they  were  themselves  acquiring  some  of 
those  virtues  which  had  burned  so  beautifully  in 
Him.  Still  conscious  of  human  limitations, 
they  made  no  claim  of  having  beheld  the 
actual  God-head,  but  having  known  His  Ex- 
pression, they  doubted  not  that  the  Father  in 
all  His  perfections  had  been  fully  "  declared  "  to 
them. 

The  argument  seems  peculiarly  satisfying.  It 
is  so  consistent  with  fundamental  things  of  our 
knowledge  that  it  carries  a  sort  of  axiomatic 
force.  The  impulse  of  personality  to  photograph 
itself  in  work  that  it  loves,  we  are  all  in  some 
degree  conscious  of ;  we  can  understand  the  same 
impulse  in  God,  and  it  makes  a  reason,  vaguely 
seen  but  comprehensible,  for  creation.  And 
after  men  had  been  created,  it  is  natural  that 
God  should  wish  to  be  acquainted, — I  sincerely 
trust  that  I  seem  to  speak  with  as  much  reverence 
as  I  intend.  All  that  we  see  around  us  is  most 
intelligible  when  we  interpret  it  as  God  seeking 
introduction  to  us  and  our  fellows.  From  the 
mighty  clouds  that  thunder  in  the  heavens  to  the 
violet  that  blooms  silently  in  the  hidden  copse,  it 
is  all  God  trying  to  speak  to  us — to  speak  to  us 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  119 

by  His  "  Word,"  through  whom  **  all  things 
were  made,  and  without  Him  was  not  anything 
made  that  hath  been  made."  Yet  we  cannot 
help  knowing  how  ill  this  language  reaches  the 
ears  of  the  many  ;  it  is  communication,  but  to 
the  multitudes  it  does  not  communicate.  Shall 
then  God  be  baffled  ?  What  shall  He  do  more  ? 
Confronting  that  question,  I  for  one  can  only  as- 
sent to  the  rationality  of  John's  further  teaching 
— that  going  on  beyond  the  works  of  nature,  God 
pressed  still  closer  to  the  heart  of  mankind  and 
caused  His  "  Word  "  to  become  incarnate  and 
dwell  with  men  not  as  creating  Spirit  but  as 
burden-sharing  Friend.  To  say  the  least,  God 
would  not  have  tried  the  highest  form  of  self-ex- 
pressing speech  to  men  without  voicing  Himself 
in  a  Man.  Other  forms  of  nature  are  a  bodying 
forth  of  gross  matter  alone,  but  humanity  is  a 
clothing  for  spirits — spirits  kindred  to  Himself. 
To  hear  then  that  God,  who  had  exhibited  His 
own  character  in  every  other  work  of  His  hands, 
at  length  employed  the  most  refined  medium  of  ex- 
pression accessible — human  personality — singu- 
larly accords  with  the  fit  evolution  of  such  a  pur- 
pose. A  rational  outlook  might  almost,  one 
feels,  have  foreseen  it  unaided.  When  the 
potentates  of  nations  would  become  friends,  it 
does  not  satisfy  to  send  gifts  and  letters ;  each 
must  send  to  the  other  a  man.  Even  so  the 
whole  of  the  message  of  heaven  was  not  delivered 


120         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

in  the  earth  until  there  came  forth  from  God  an 
Ambassador — a  Man. 

Had  John  offered  this  reasoning  as  a  theorem 
only,  I  think  it  would  have  impressed  me  enough 
to  compel  a  search  through  history  to  find  the 
One  who  fulfilled  this  role  of  the  Interpreter  of 
God.  Could  such  a  quest  have  ever  rested  at  the 
feet  of  any  other  character  than  this  Nazarene 
whom  John  adored  while  he  wrote  ?  Is  there  in 
all  the  world's  chronicle  another  figure  of  whom 
an  inquirer  would  dare  to  think  as  the  very  Ex- 
pression of  the  Most  High  ?  Take  this  verse 
from  the  evangelist, — "We  beheld  His  glory, 
glory  as  of  the  only  begotten  from  the  Father," 
— and  can  you  write  into  it  any  name  but  Jesus 
and  have  the  world  heed  you  ?  But  write 
"  Jesus  "  there,  and  all  the  world  will  pay  at  least 
respect.  Men  cannot  gainsay  Jesus.  Even 
those  who  will  not  allow  that  He  came  as  God  or 
from  God,  freely  grant  it  no  strange  thing  that 
His  lovers  believed  they  saw  God  in  this  Man's 
moral  beauty.  Nay,  more;  they  confess  that 
whoever  in  the  will  to  know  God  studies  the 
Galilean  Master  does  not  belie  God  in  what  he 
learns.  By  all  agreement  this  Man  is  at  the  least 
One  like  unto  the  Highest.  To  substantiate  the 
incarnation  then,  we  have  a  chain  of  logic,  inter- 
linked from  evident  facts  of  nature  and  person- 
ality, which  leads  direct  to  such  a  manifestation, 
and  beyond  all  the  logic,  we  have  a  Personage  in 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  121 

history  who  perfectly  suffices  the  ideal.  Is  it  not 
a  manifold  proof?  John  wrote  but  a  few  decades 
after  his  Master  had  been  taken  away  from  his 
head,  but  his  estimate  of  his  beloved  Friend  con- 
tinues, relative  to  personal  qualities,  the  estimate 
of  the  intelligent  world.  Some  decline  John's 
theological  deductions,  but  none  disparage  the 
"  grace  and  truth  "  which  he  said  filled  the  Lord's 
life.  Yet  certainly  an  appraisement  of  character 
which,  at  that  near  time  and  in  spite  of  the  bias 
of  intimacy,  was  sane  and  sound  enough  to  com- 
mand the  assent  of  the  world  until  now,  argues 
behind  it  a  stable  judgment  whose  account  of  the 
origin  of  that  character  also  deserves  the  most 
serious  weight  in  the  minds  of  the  candid. 

By  the  reasoning  of  John  the  miracle  of  the 
incarnation  comes  under  the  rule  of  necessity 
which  in  a  previous  chapter  has  been  proposed 
for  a  true  credential  of  the  miraculous.  God's 
endeavour  to  make  Himself  known  to  men  in  the 
ordinary  operation  of  nature,  had,  through  men's 
stupidity,  largely  come  to  naught.  But  His 
desire  to  be  known  still  persisting.  He  must  needs 
go  on  to  the  next  advance  of  method — the  resort 
to  human  personality.  There  was  no  other 
available  expedient.  And  this  called  for  an  un- 
precedented and  therefore  essentially  miraculous 
entering  of  the  divine  existence  into  human  con- 
/ditions.  Some  element  of  miracle  is  inevitable 
by  nature  of  the  case;  for  this  exhibitory  union 


122         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

of  God  with  mankind  is  a  thing  done  once  for  all 
— necessarily  unique  and  unrepeatable.  It  can- 
not therefore  become  to  any  race  or  generation  a 
matter  of  experience,  and  what  men  have  not 
experienced  they  will  of  course  esteem  miraculous 
when  it  comes  to  pass.  What  means  would  be 
needful  to  procure  a  thoroughly  true  revelation 
of  God  in  human  guise,  it  is  clearly  impossible 
for  any  mundane  mind  even  to  guess ;  whether 
the  phenomena  that  made  this  incarnation  differ- 
ent from  the  birth  of  another  child  into  the  world 
would  be  apparent  to  observation  or  hidden  away 
in  those  secret  places  where  all  life  is  a  viewless 
mystery,  not  the  wisest  of  thinkers  might  assume 
to  decide  a  priori.  There  is  a  recognizable  pre- 
sumption of  miracle,  but  not  of  any  particular  sort 
of  miracle.  Had  we  read,  therefore,  that  the 
birth  of  the  Lord  was  wholly  after  the  ordinary 
physical  manner,  we  should  have  held  no  reason- 
able prejudice  against  the  account  nor  have 
needed  to  deny  on  that  score  the  divine  revela- 
tion in  His  nature.  We  should  simply  have 
supposed  that  the  miracle  in  His  coming  to  earth 
lay  farther  back  in  a  spiritual  sphere.  But  when 
we  do  read  that  He  was  not  born  by  usual  human 
parentage, — but  instead  of  a  virgin  mother, — we 
should  indulge  as  little  prejudice,  for,  to  speak 
entirely  within  bounds,  it  is  at  least  not  surpris- 
ing that  the  moral  miracle  of  God  incarnate  in 
human   flesh   should  have  a  physical  corollary. 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  123 

Whether  this  corollary  was  involved  in  some 
necessary  sequence  of  cause  and  effect — the 
human  showing  forth  of  divinity  being  attainable 
in  no  other  way — or  whether  it  was  a  mere  in- 
cident appropriate  to  the  conditions,  the  gospel 
writers  do  not  affect  to  understand.  Doubtless 
we  moderns  had  better  curb  our  speculations  by 
the  example  of  their  reticence.  In  any  case,  the 
common  theological  account — that  Jesus  was 
born  of  woman  alone  in  order  that  He  might  in- 
herit a  less  contaminating  heredity,  a  less  portion 
of  original  sin— is  scarcely  more  illuminating  than 
convincing.  It  does  occur  to  me,  however,  when 
I  reflect  upon  the  mother's  mystic  pre-natal  in- 
fluence on  the  character  of  her  child,  that  for  the 
pure  and  passionless  Son  of  God  it  was  a  peculiar 
sanctification  that  no  memory  of  the  red  desires 
of  the  flesh  stained  the  white  broodings  of 
maternity  above  the  forming  members  of  His 
earthly  frame. 

The  reticence  of  the  evangelists  from  specula- 
tions concerning  the  virgin  birth  seems  to  be  but 
part  of  a  characteristic  reticence  throughout  the 
early  church  about  the  fact  of  it.  While  Mary 
lived  at  least,  the  Christians  appear  to  have  felt 
the  mystery  of  her  marvellous  Child  too  intimate 
and  sacred  a  matter  to  be  bruited  abroad  to  the 
world  ;  it  was  a  sacred  knowledge  esoteric  to  the 
church,— an  incident  of  such  dehcacy  that  they 
would  talk  of  it  freely  only  where  they  were  as- 


124         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

sured  that  they  would  be  heard  with  reverence. 
Their  historians  wrote  down  the  true  relation  of 
the  matter  when  they  undertook  to  tell  of  the 
birth  of  their  Lord ;  fidelity  to  truth  demanded 
that,  and  at  any  rate  these  works  were  expected 
to  be  read  chiefly  among  the  faithful.  But  so  far 
as  can  now  be  judged  from  what  remains  to  us  of 
the  sermons  of  the  first  generation  of  preachers, 
the  contemporaries  of  our  Lord,  the  proclama- 
tion which  they  carried  out  to  the  world,  bidding 
men  repent  and  believe  on  Jesus  of  Nazareth  for 
salvation  from  their  sins,  said  nothing  whatever 
about  His  having  been  born  of  a  virgin  mother. 
They  preached  Him  fearlessly  and  without 
hesitance  as  the  very  Christ  of  God,  but  they 
did  not  deem  it  needful  to  cite  His  miraculous 
birth  in  proof  of  His  divine  character.  The  res- 
urrection was  to  them  the  all-sufficient  demon- 
stration of  His  superhumanity,  and  they  felt  no 
need  of  supplementing  that  proof. 

In  this  they  merely  followed  a  lesson  which 
they  had  learned  from  the  teaching  of  their  Lord 
as  He  declared  His  own  ministry.  He,  when 
pressed  for  a  "  sign  "  of  His  Messiahship,  pointed 
forward  to  His  rising  from  the  dead,  and  would 
not  turn  back  to  lay  even  His  reverent  hand  on 
the  holy  secret  of  His  maternity,  to  bring  that 
forth  as  a  credential  of  His  authority  before  a 
gapingly  curious  crowd.  Undoubtedly  thousands 
of  the  early  Christians  believed  on  His  name  as 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  125 

the  eternal  Son  of  God — the  Logos  who  in  the 
beginning  was  with  God  and  who  was  God — 
before  they  so  much  as  heard  that  He  was  born 
into  the  world  other  than  as  all  men  are  born. 
There  are,  to  be  sure,  many  critics  who  argue 
from  these  circumstances  that  the  first  gospel 
preachers  had  not  heard  of  any  miraculous  nativ- 
ity. But  that  assumption  raises  instantly  inex- 
plicable difficulties,  of  which  the  most  insoluble 
is  the  impossibility  of  supposing  that  Paul,  the 
prince  of  preachers,  would  be  unaware  or  skep- 
tical of  any  incident  in  the  careful  biography  of 
Jesus  prepared  by  his  own  faithful  companion, 
Luke.  I  make  this  statement  strong,  because 
the  present  trend  of  New  Testament  study  forti- 
fies more  stoutly  than  ever  before  the  behef  that 
the  physician  who  travelled  with  Paul  wrote  the 
third  gospel  and  wrote  it  as  we  have  it  now. 
The  argument  from  silence  to  ignorance  and 
thence  to  the  unreality  of  the  story  is  therefore 
a  hazardous  and  unpersuasive  path  of  reasoning. 
On  the  other  hand,  to  think  of  the  Christians 
delicately  guarding  among  themselves  a  beauti- 
ful mystery  concerning  their  Lord  and  His 
mother,  which  it  was  not  necessary  to  publish 
for  the  salvation  of  the  world,  but  which  sweetly 
fostered  their  own  veneration  for  the  angel-visited 
home  in  Nazareth  and  the  strawy  manger  bed  in 
Bethlehem,  agrees  entirely  with  the  face-appear- 
ance of  the  New  Testament — gospels,  Acts  and 


126         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

epistles  together.  And  although  the  bit  of  senti- 
ment cannot  really  be  said  to  argue  anything,  it 
is  pleasant  to  recognize,  in  this  respectful  hiding 
away  of  Mary's  mother-secret  while  she  lived,  a 
chivalric  gentlemanliness  which  beginning  thus 
with  the  apostles — nay,  with  Jesus  Himself — has 
continued  to  characterize  pure  Christian  life  until 
this  day. 

The  omission  of  the  fact  of  the  virginal  birth 
from  the  evangelistic  preaching  of  the  apostles 
is  a  circumstance  of  the  largest  value  in  estimat- 
ing the  credibility  of  the  nativity  narratives. 
Practically  the  sole  reason  why  anybody  who 
otherwise  adheres  to  the  evangelical  faith  enter- 
tains doubt  of  this  birth  story  is  the  easily  sug- 
gested suspicion  that  the  early  church  felt  anxious 
to  establish  some  tale  of  Christ's  supernatural 
origin  in  order  to  insure  Him  an  exaltation  suit- 
able for  the  worship  of  His  followers.  But  a  very 
little  serious  study  of  the  apostolic  records  shows 
conclusively  that  the  early  church  felt  no  such 
necessity.  Quite  irrespective  of  the  miracle  of 
His  parentage,  His  first  disciples  lifted  up  their 
Master's  name  above  every  name;  no  added 
incident  of  life  or  death  could  exalt  Him  in  their 
esteem  and  in  their  preaching  above  that  supreme 
pinnacle  on  which  they  placed  Him  by  virtue  of 
His  own  word  to  them  and  by  virtue  of  His  felt 
sway  over  their  lives.  There  was  therefore  no 
conceivable  incentive  to  include  wonder  legends 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  127 

about  Him  in  the  characteristic  Hterature  of  the 
church.  It  may,  indeed,  be  alleged  with  a  certain 
plausibility  that  Matthew  had  an  unbalancing 
bias  towards  some  story  of  virgin  birth  because 
he  knew  a  passage  in  the  prophecy  of  Isaiah 
which  appeared  to  him  to  foretell  that  the 
Messiah  would  be  thus  born.  But  it  seems  critic- 
ally assured  that  Matthew  could  never  from  his 
parents  or  the  rabbis  of  his  people  have  learned 
to  connect  that  verse  with  Messiah ;  the  Jewish 
interpreters  of  the  Scriptures  did  not  look  upon 
the  passage  as  Messianic,  and  among  their  mani- 
fold anticipations  of  a  coming  Son  of  David  had 
no  expectation  of  His  being  brought  into  the 
world  without  a  human  father.  The  only  likely 
suggestion  therefore  which  accounts  for  the 
publican  apostle's  use  of  this  verse  of  prophecy 
is  that  after  he  had  learned  of  the  manner  of 
Christ's  entrance  into  the  number  of  humanity, 
he  lighted  for  himself  upon  Isaiah's  words  and 
made  what  seemed  to  him — after  the  fact — the 
obvious  application.  Otherwise  he  would  have 
shpped  over  the  passage  unthinkingly,  and  never 
have  dreamed  of  connecting  it  with  Jesus.  This 
assertion  can  be  put  forward  with  the  more  posi- 
tiveness  because  Matthew's  very  apparent  pur- 
pose in  citing  Old  Testament  quotations  was  to 
convince  unbelieving  Jews  that  the  prophets  had 
spoken  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  But  it  would  have 
been  bootless  for  him  to  direct  their  attention 


128         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

to  a  scripture  which  they  did  not  apply  to  the 
"  Anointed  One,"  unless  he  had  at  hand  the 
clearest  proof  that  in  the  case  of  Jesus  there  had 
been  a  wholly  unanticipated  fulfillment  of  words 
whose  predictive  character  nobody  had  before 
observed. 

But  whatever  may  be  said  of  the  reliability  of 
Matthew,  none  can  charge  Luke  with  bias  towards 
a  story  of  miraculous  conception.  As  a  physician 
he  would  instead  feel  an  almost  inevitable  repug- 
nance to  such  a  report.  Medicine  was  not  of 
course  in  those  days  the  lofty  science  that  it  is 
to-day,  but  it  was  of  all  the  vocations  most 
familiar  with  the  physical  facts  of  existence,  and 
had  begun  to  accumulate  something  of  the 
modern  respect  for  the  invariable  processes  of 
nature.  With  such  training  Luke  would  not 
readily  believe  an  account  of  virginal  birth.  He 
would  be  the  more  incredulous  because,  as  the 
introductory  paragraph  of  his  gospel  evidences, 
he  understood  the  danger  that  superstitious  tradi- 
tions would,  among  the  ignorant,  soon  gather 
around  the  memory  of  an  heroic  popular  figure. 
Indeed,  his  words  appear  to  indicate  his  suspicion 
that  already  irresponsible  persons  had  written 
misleading  stories  about  the  Master's  life.  He 
keenly  foresaw  that  the  world  in  time  to  come 
would  be  intensely  interested  in  the  life  of  Jesus, 
and  he  appreciated  the  importance  of  creating  a 
record    of    painstaking   accuracy   to  which   all 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  129 

future  inquirers  could  refer  with  confidence.  He 
estimated  correctly  the  need  of  having  this  record 
made  out  by  an  impartial  investigator  while  it 
was  yet  possible  for  him  to  collect  data  from  eye- 
witnesses, and  while  nothing  of  consequence  had 
to  be  taken  at  second  hand.  He  wanted  "  cer- 
tainty "  himself  and  proposed  to  afford  "  cer- 
tainty "  to  others. 

An  intelligent  and  educated  author  undertak- 
ing his  task  in  this  spirit  of  conscientious  obliga- 
tion to  his  inquiring  fellows  could  hardly  get 
astray  on  any  considerable  matter.  And  least  of 
all  would  he  be  likely  to  be  involved  in  telling  a 
fiction  about  the  birth  of  his  Hero.  Luke  was 
too  sophisticated  a  man  of  the  world  not  to  think 
at  once  what  a  turn  the  ribald  would  give  to  his 
account  of  how  an  unmarried  woman  became  a 
mother;  he  certainly  would  not  have  exposed 
Mary  to  such  a  cruel  slur — which  afterwards  both 
Jew  and  Roman  infidels  did  visit  upon  her — if  he 
could  have  been  true  to  the  truth  without  relating 
the  story  which  he  did  write.  And  there  could 
have  been  to  Luke  no  allurement  to  draw  for  his 
Lord  a  parallel  with  the  tales  of  deific  paternity 
in  the  Olympian  myths  of  his  native  tongue; 
their  grossness  could  only  have  revolted  his  pure 
mind ;  they  could  not  possibly  have  suggested  to 
him  a  new  way  of  honouring  his  Saviour.  More- 
over, the  nativity  chapters  of  Luke  are  not  Greek ; 
they  are  Hebraic — strongly  Hebraic  in  their  no- 


130         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

ble  psalmody  not  more  than  in  their  intense  Jew- 
ish nationaHsm.  But  Hebrew  minds  could  not 
have  concocted  artificially  a  legend  of  virgin  birth 
for  the  elevation  of  their  Messiah,  for  so  funda- 
mental and  penetrating  was  the  Jewish  respect 
for  family  life  that  birth  outside  a  family  could 
not  possibly  have  seemed  on  theory  a  greater 
honour.  Several  Old  Testament  women  "  got  a 
man  with  the  help  of  Jehovah,"  but  they  bore 
their  sons  by  nature  to  their  husbands.  So  these 
eminently  Hebraic  chapters  are  founded  on  an 
idea  of  which  there  is  no  prior  Hebrew  trace. 
The  whole  survey  of  the  case  narrows  down  from 
all  sides  to  one  only  reasonable  conclusion — that 
Luke  wrote  what  he  did  about  Nazareth  and 
Bethlehem  simply  because,  when  he  had  dili- 
gently sought  out  the  truth,  the  facts  compelled 
him  to  this  record.     And  God  made  the  facts. 

When  a  man  says  he  does  not  believe  in  the 
virgin  birth,  it  is  usually  quite  uncertain  what  he 
means.  If  he  intends  to  say  that  he  possesses  no 
indisputable  evidence  of  it  which  would  make  it 
impossible  to  suppose  the  contrary,  then  he  can 
only  be  answered  that  he  is  simply  in  the  same 
case  as  all  the  rest  of  men — believers  and  unbe- 
lievers. But  that  is  of  little  significance.  The 
same  thing  could  be  said  respecting  almost  any 
other  single  event  of  ancient  history  if  taken  in 
isolation.  The  corroborations  of  the  past  seldom 
rise  to  the  point  of  demonstration.     Yet  such  an 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  131 

admission  by  no  means  abolishes  believing,  nor 
resolves  all  credence  into  credulity.  Facts  far 
from  demonstrable  are  yet  soundly  established — 
established  by  the  great  overplus  of  probability 
which  remains  when  all  testimony  and  all  likeli- 
hoods and  all  mutual  dependences  have  been 
sifted,  weighed  and  balanced  with  impartial  cal- 
culation. No  studious  man  can  doubt  that  a 
sane  historical  judgment,  practiced  in  this  art  of 
analyzing  human  chronicles,  arrives  at  grounds 
of  assurance  on  which  the  most  unreserved  faith 
may  be  lawfully  and  safely  founded.  The  con- 
sensus of  such  faith  in  many  men  is  in  fact  the 
world's  belief  in  its  own  history.  But  if  a  man 
demands  something  more  than  such  assurance 
for  accepting  the  fact  of  the  virgin  birth,  then  it 
must  frankly  be  admitted  to  him  that  there  is 
nothing  more.  Indeed  in  one  respect  the  virgin 
motherhood  is  more  remote  from  demonstration 
than  an  ordinary  matter  of  common  record,  for 
it  never  was  demonstrable.  Even  the  contem- 
poraries of  Mary  had  to  accept  it  by  faith  in  her 
purity  and  veracity.  This  observation,  however, 
stands  not  at  all  against  the  truth  of  the  asserted 
fact,  since  it  is  a  condition  that  inheres  in  the  cir- 
cumstances. A  fair  man  ought  to  make  allow- 
ance for  the  circumstances  in  fixing  the  measure 
of  proof  which  he  must  have  to  make  him  be- 
Heve.  A  man  who  insists  on  more  proof  than 
normally  belongs  to  the  matter  at  issue  makes  me 


132         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

question  whether  he  is  not  seeking  to  evade  be- 
hef  rather  than  to  attain  it  Before  such  sus- 
picion I  cannot  help  it  if  at  times  my  sympathy 
with  the  difficulties  ofthe  doubter  rather  suddenly 
evaporates.  And  if  besides  persisting  in  his  own 
extravagance  he  blames  me  with  dishonesty  be- 
cause I  am  willing  to  beheve  on  more  moderate 
allowance  of  corroboration,  I  resent  the  insolence 
and  charge  against  him  a  still  heavier  score  of 
unfairness. 

For  the  other  doubter  who  recognizes  cor- 
rectly that  only  average  historic  probability  can 
be  expected  to  substantiate  any  history — biblical 
or  secular — but  who  does  not  find  enough  of 
such  probability  in  this  case  to  weigh  down  the 
affirmative  side  of  his  judgment,  I  entertain  on 
the  contrary  the  liveliest  sympathy.  If  truly  he 
*•  cannot  believe,"  then  I  think  it  entirely  legiti- 
mate to  remind  him  of  the  fact  already  adverted 
to — that  in  apostolic  times  many  undoubtedly  re- 
ceived the  Son  of  God  to  the  regeneration  of 
their  souls  all  unwitting  that  there  had  been  a 
virgin  birth.  What  did  not  seem  an  essential 
doctrine  of  grace  to  the  first  preachers,  no 
preacher  has  the  authority  to  pronounce  essential 
now.  Therefore  I  should  beg  each  honest 
seeker  after  God  not  to  cease  from  following 
after  Jesus  for  his  doubts  in  this  respect.  He 
may  be  a  Christian  none  the  less,  believing  in 
the  blessed  Saviourhood  of  the  crucified  Lord 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  133 

and  trusting  the  leadership  of  the  living  Christ. 
Yet  I  would  never  say  to  such  a  man  that  it 
makes  no  difference  whether  he  believes  in  the 
virgin  birth  or  not.  I  am  fully  persuaded  that 
there  is  gain  in  believing  everything  that  is  true 
and  loss  in  disbelieving  the  slightest  fact  that  has 
been  or  is.  The  universe  is  the  sum  of  all  truths, 
and  the  man  who  has  refused — though  under 
disability  of  the  most  conscientious  doubt  that 
ever  possessed  a  man's  mind — to  receive  any 
portion  of  that  sum,  has  by  so  much  put  himself 
out  of  parallel  with  the  universal  movement  of 
realities.  What  the  penalty  may  be,  or  in  how 
far  for  the  credit  of  his  honesty  a  compassionate 
God  may  commute  an  unbeliever's  penalty,  it  is 
far  from  me  to  try  to  say.  But  I  dare  not  think 
that  it  is  as  well  with  any  man  that  he  should  dis- 
beheve  as  that  he  should  beheve  the  fact  of  things. 
Therefore  if  our  Lord  Christ  was  born  of  a  vir- 
gin, I  desire  to  believe  it ;  it  may  not  be  essen- 
tial, but  I  cannot  suppose  it  unimportant.  And 
I  do  believe  it,  because  when  all  considerations 
are  summed  up  together,  it  appears  to  my  judg- 
ment far  more  plausible  that  the  nativity  of  Jesus 
was  as  the  gospels  relate  than  that  stories  so  au- 
thenticated could  have  sprung  up  from  seeds  of 
either  imagination  or  superstition. 

Of  the  miracle  of  the  resurrection  not  so  much 
can  be  conceded  as  has  been  conceded  concern- 
ing the  virgin  birth.     The  apostles  did  preach 


134         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

the  resurrection  of  Christ,  and  preached  it  cen- 
trally in  their  message  to  a  sinning  world  which 
they  sought  to  disciple  for  Him.  Christ  crucified 
was  no  stronger  note  in  the  apostolic  sermons 
than  Christ  risen.  In  part,  no  doubt,  this  em- 
phasis simply  testifies  to  their  own  sense  of  the 
pressure  of  the  world-old  question  :  "  If  a  man 
die,  shall  he  live  again?"  The  joy  of  having 
seen  their  dead  and  buried  Master  triumphantly 
alive  once  more  after  He  had  broken  the  bonds 
of  the  tomb  remained  with  them  a  comforting  and 
all-conclusive  assurance  that  death  would  have  no 
deadly  sting  when  they  came  to  encounter  it. 
And  they  were  human  and  brotherly  enough  to 
understand  that  through  the  dubious  and  grop- 
ing pagan  world  no  other  ray  of  their  gospel 
could  so  directly  strike  to  the  darkest  vortex  of 
prevailing  spiritual  despair ;  it  must  greatly  have 
disappointed  them  that  so  often  the  men  who 
most  needed  the  story  of  the  resurrection  to 
answer  and  dissipate  persistent  fears  would  not 
receive  it  because  it  answered  those  fears  too 
well ;  it  was  "  too  good  to  be  true."  But  there 
was  far  more  to  the  primitive  preaching  of  the 
resurrection  than  merely  a  proclamation  of  com- 
fort in  face  of  a  mysterious  beyond.  The  early 
missionaries  recognized  themselves  as  commis- 
sioned warriors  against  the  sin  of  the  world,  and 
they  knew  that  in  that  desperate  conflict  they 
must  needs  have  a  living  Champion.     They  were 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  135 

evangelists  to  men  who  required  indeed  a  Sacri- 
fice for  sins  past,  but  who  would  be  Httle  bettered 
by  a  cancellation  of  old  debts  if  they  could  not 
find  besides  a  Helper  now  at  hand,  to  hft  them 
out  of  the  foulness  of  their  evil-disposed  hearts 
and  hold  them  steady  to  the  clean  ways  of  right- 
eousness. Then  as  now  sin  demanded  a 
"  double  cure  "  ;  sinners  must  be  saved  from 
both  "  its  guilt  and  power."  The  resurrection 
was  the  Christians'  pledge  of  such  a  Leader  for 
their  own  enterprises  of  rescue  and  such  a 
Helper  to  be  commended  to  the  multitudes 
whom  they  summoned  with  the  call  of  God 
"  commanding  men  that  they  should  all  every- 
where repent." 

Had  their  faith  that  "Jesus  died  and  rose 
again,"  ever  have  been  cleft  in  twain,  and  the 
victorious  second  clause  of  their  creed  wiped  out, 
it  would  inevitably  have  destroyed  both  the 
courage  and  the  confidence  of  their  evangelism. 
They  would  have  been  left  without  a  message. 
These  downright  and  tremendously  practical 
men  would  never  have  achieved  the  dilettante 
skill  to  repair  the  loss  with  artificial  rhetoric 
about  the  beautiful  ethical  example  of  Christ. 
They  must  have  a  present  Saviour — a  past  Ex- 
ample would  not  suffice.  It  was  undoubtedly 
this  feeling  which  made  Paul  say :  "  If  Christ 
hath  not  been  raised,  your  faith  is  vain  ;  ye  are 
yet  in  your  sins."     It  was  this  feehng  which  in 


136         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

every  missionary  sermon  forced  him  straight  up 
to  the  dimax  of  the  Risen  Man  ordained  of  God 
not  only  for  salvation  but  for  judgment.  And  if 
he  was  unable  to  convince  his  hearers  of  this 
preeminent  assertion  in  his  preaching — as  was 
the  unhappy  case  at  Athens — he  quite  despaired 
of  bringing  them  to  any  saving  faith  in  Jesus, 
and  dejectedly  resumed  his  journey  in  hope  of 
lighting  next  upon  a  place  where  the  prejudices 
of  the  people  were  not  so  obdurate  before 
the  central  declaration  of  his  evangel.  When 
Peter  preached  to  Cornelius  and  John  wrote  to 
the  seven  churches  of  Asia,  the  stress  of  doctrine 
was  on  the  same  pivotal  point  of  life  from  the 
dead.  It  goes  without  saying  that  what  all  the 
apostles  thus  staked  all  their  ministry  upon,  they 
all  believed  without  hesitation  or  allowance. 
Whatever  the  church  of  the  twentieth  century 
may  say  of  the  resurrection,  it  is  sure  that  the 
church  of  the  first  century  never  spoke  dubiously 
of  it.  If  there  had  been  no  resurrection,  there 
would  have  been  no  church. 

As  concerns  the  crisis  between  the  crucifixion 
and  Pentecost,  this  latter  remark  has  often  been 
made,  and  its  obvious  force  has  been  generally 
acknowledged.  The  immense  reversal  of  con- 
ditions at  Jerusalem,  whereby  a  scattered  party 
of  discouraged  peasants,  dashed  down  to  despair 
by  the  execution  of  their  Prophet,  were  suddenly 
transformed  into  a  bold  and  even  defiant  group 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  137 

of  propagandists,  recklessly  accusative  of  their 
rulers  and  absolutely  indifferent  to  threatenings 
of  persecution  and  death,  is  a  historic  puzzle  for 
which  no  solution  has  ever  been  suggested  ex- 
cept the  solution  which  the  New  Testament 
authors  all  relate — that  the  downcast  peasants 
saw  their  Lord  again  alive  and  responded  with 
the  stir  of  an  unconquerable  loyalty  to  His 
charge  to  preach  His  name  everywhere  coupled 
with  His  promise  to  be  with  them  in  their 
service  "  all  the  days  even  unto  the  consumma- 
tion of  the  age."  This  amazing,  radical  and 
far-fraught  change  in  a  company  of  men  who 
had  had  few  or  no  native  elements  of  initiative 
or  aggressiveness  in  themselves,  is,  even  by  itself, 
almost  a  decisive  proof  of  the  rising  of  Christ, 
for  with  the  rising  the  change  is  explicable  and 
without  it  it  is  not.  But  the  explicatory  reach  of 
the  resurrection  down  the  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  church  goes  much  farther  than 
merely  to  Pentecost.  Without  an  actual  and 
indubitable  return  of  the  Lord  Jesus  to  life  and 
to  at  least  a  temporary  guiding  fellowship  with 
His  disciples,  the  paramountcy  of  resurrection 
doctrine  in  the  later  preaching  of  their  gospel 
would  have  been  impossible.  That  other  note 
which  was  in  their  preaching  at  first  very 
noticeably  and  very  naturally — how  Jesus  "  went 
about  doing  good  and  healing  all  that  were  op- 
pressed   of    the   devil " — would   infallibly   have 


138         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

come  uppermost  if  their  later  and  more  mar- 
vellous experience  with  their  Master  had  not 
intervened  with  an  equal  reality  between  their 
apostleship  and  that  sweet  Galilean  discipleship 
in  which  they  knew  Him  only  as  a  kindly 
wonder-worker.  No  matter  how  zealously  they 
might  have  resolved  upon  some  factitious  allega- 
tion in  His  honour  or  how  far  they  might  have 
been  beguiled  by  some  fond  illusion  of  His 
memory,  their  last  and  deepest  real  contact  with 
such  a  personaHty  as  Jesus  must  in  the  long  run 
dominate  what  they  said  about  Him  in  their 
descriptions  of  Him  to  the  world.  The  con- 
sistency of  resurrection  preaching  in  the  apostolic 
church  is  therefore  a  singularly  forcible  sub- 
stantiation of  the  truth  of  what  was  thus  so  often 
and  so  agreeingly  declared.  If  to  these  con- 
siderations there  shall  be  added  the  many  in- 
dependent strands  of  testimony  to  His  appear- 
ances, in  form  not  only  visible  but  tangible, 
many  days  after  the  Romans  had  sealed  His 
dead  body  in  the  tomb,  it  becomes  no  vain  boast 
to  claim,  as  some  are  wont  to  do,  that  the  resur- 
rection of  Christ  is  fully  as  well  attested  as  any 
other  incident  in  the  annals  of  mankind.  It  is 
difficult  to  harmonize  all  the  varying  accounts  of 
the  meetings  of  the  Lord  and  His  friends  be- 
tween the  resurrection  and  the  ascension,  but 
the  very  multiplicity  of  such  accounts  and  the 
manifest    independence    of    the    sources    from 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus 


139 


which  they  were  taken  down  for  record,  makes 
stronger  their  united  evidence  to  the  one  crucial 
fact — that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  "  aUve  after  His 
passion." 

It  is  of  course  impossible  that  the  church  of 
the  present  time  should  retain  that  same  vivid 
experiential  impression  of  a  glorified  Saviour, 
walking  again  amidst  the  former  haunts  of  His 
humiliation,  which  was  painted  indelibly  on  the 
memories  of  those  who  companied  with  Him 
during  those  mystic  forty  days  while  He  was 
"Speaking  the  things  concerning  the  kingdom 
of  God."  The  best  substitute  for  it  which  we 
may  enjoy  is  the  liveliest  historical  imagination 
that  the  faithful  study  of  their  legacies  to  us 
will  evoke.  How  exactly  we  must  grasp  up  into 
minds  of  behef  the  precise  circumstantial  inci- 
dents which  they  remembered  and  recorded,  in 
order  that  we  also  with  them  may  realize  Him 
as  the  Ever-Living  One,  I  do  not  judge  it  need- 
ful here  to  try  to  analyze.  But  I  do  think  it 
clear  that  if  the  church  to-day  desires  to  preach 
the  same  gospel  to  the  same  purpose  as  the 
church  of  the  Lord's  own  age  preached,  it  must 
be  inspired  with  identically  the  same  faith — that 
the  Master  who  lived  a  revealing  life  and  died  a 
vicarious  death  in  Judsea  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago,  still  survives  triumphant  and  reigning  to  this 
hour,  ready  with  omnipotent  strength  and  limit- 
less good  will  to  fight  the  fight  of  any  struggling 


140         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

man  caught  in  toils  of  that  enemy  whom  He 
Himself  encountered  in  many  a  weary  conflict 
in  this  world.  The  need  of  the  present  genera- 
tion is  as  sore  as  that  of  any  other  generation 
for  the  "  double  cure  "  of  sin,  and  whoever  speaks 
of  no  contemporary  Saviour  offers  but  half  a 
cure.  And  I  do  not  conceive  how  any  one  can 
make  mention  of  such  a  living  salvation,  except 
he  allows  for  some  triumph  over  death  and  time 
like  to  what  the  resurrection  bespeaks.  While 
emphasizing  this  great  evangelistic  meaning  in 
the  miracle,  however,  I  cannot  follow  those  who 
would  load  it  with  all  the  burden  of  questions 
about  the  mode  of  existence  of  immortal  spirits 
after  death.  Whether  the  body  which  the  dis- 
ciples saw  and  were  even  allowed  to  touch  when 
Jesus  reappeared  to  them,  was  the  typical  em- 
bodiment of  the  happy  dead,  is  scarcely  an  in- 
quiry with  which  a  religious  faith  in  the  rising  of 
Christ  should  be  entangled.  It  is  sufficient  to 
be  assured  that  the  Lord  came  back  to  those  who 
loved  Him  in  such  guise  that  they  were  con- 
vinced of  His  actual  personal  presence  with  them 
again,  and  knew  thereby  that  "  it  was  not  pos- 
sible that  He  should  be  holden  of  death."  This 
was  the  didactic  worth  of  the  resurrection;  it 
cannot  arbitrarily  be  required  to  stretch  farther. 
So  too  the  Lord's  ascension  need  not  be  en- 
cumbered with  crude  difficulties  about  whither 
His   body   was   transported   from   earth.     It   is 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  141 

enough  to  know  that  His  followers  had  at  the 
end  of  their  bHssful  month  and  ten  days  a  sight 
before  their  eyes  that  told  them  their  Leader 
was  going  away  from  them  not  dyingly  but 
livingly  into  a  realm  invisible.  And  there  faith 
still  beholds  Him  abiding,  yet  not  forgetful  of  the 
world  in  which  He  suffered  for  the  race  of  man- 
kind whom  He  "  loved  unto  the  end." 

The  apostles  did  not  belie  the  earthly  life  of 
their  Captain  when  they  chiefly  preached  Him  as 
the  Conqueror  of  sin.  That  had  been  the  out- 
standing character  of  His  ministry.  Granting 
that  He  was  the  true  divine  "  Expression  of 
God,"  He  could  not  have  put  any  phase  or  factor 
of  His  mission  above  or  before  His  enmity  to 
evil.  When  He  "  went  about  doing  good,"  He 
beautifully  revealed  and  exemplified  that  impartial 
benevolence  of  the  Father  who  "  maketh  His  sun 
to  rise  on  the  evil  and  the  good  and  sendeth  rain 
on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust."  When  He 
"  healed  all  that  were  sick,"  He  tenderly  pictured 
to  men  the  Father's  constant  thought  for  the 
health  and  welfare  of  the  physical  tenement 
made  to  house  humanity.  When  He  joined  the 
festivities  of  happy  homes,  He  made  manifest  the 
Father's  joy  in  the  joys  of  men.  When  He 
stilled  the  storm,  He  evidenced  the  Creator's 
command  over  creation.  But  these  all  were  in- 
cidentals of  revelation  compared  with  what  it 
meant   for   Him   to   say :     '•  Son,  be   of    good 


142         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

cheer ;  thy  sins  are  forgiven."  This  was  the 
very  master-word  of  His  Messiahship ;  this  the 
dimactic  note  of  His  message  to  mankind.  For 
the  Father  whom  He  came  to  express  to  men,  is 
indeed  kindly,  sympathizing,  protective  and 
powerful,  but  above  all  these.  He  is  righteous, 
holy,  pure.  The  governance  of  nature,  the  sup- 
port of  hfe,  the  evolvement  of  humane  society 
are  without  doubt  great  and  grave  concerns  of 
God,  but  the  overwhelming  problem  of  the 
divine  rule  of  the  world  is  the  problem  of  sin. 
The  rebellion  of  men  against  the  vast,  just  laws 
of  heaven  is  the  only  threat  of  disorder  in  the 
whole  universe.  The  vindication  then  of  His 
own  sovereignty,  and  even  more  than  that.  His 
infinite  pity  for  the  ruin  in  which  men  madly  in- 
volve themselves  by  their  transgressions,  make 
the  rooting  out  of  human  evil  the  fundamental 
task  of  the  Most  High — a  task  the  more  painful 
and  precarious  because  it  must  be  accomplished 
without  forfeiture  of  the  essential  freedom  with 
which  man  has  been  invested  as  his  most  glorious 
endowment.  And  if  God's  Ambassador  faith- 
fully represents  Him  among  men,  this  must  be 
also  the  superlative  business  of  the  Christ — to  de- 
liver men  from  sin  and  rid  the  world  of  its  blight. 
An  incarnation  not  intimately  bound  up  with  the 
questions  of  sin  and  of  salvation  would  be  an  idle 
and  inconsequential  demonstration.  It  would 
serve  no  use  equal  to  the  power  put  into  it. 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  143 

And  the  Lord  Jesus  was  not  a  failure  in  regard 
of  this  primary  mission.  He  did  not  evade  or 
minimize  it.  He  came  to  close  grapple  with  sin  ; 
He  brought  the  revelation  of  the  mind  and  heart 
of  God  to  shine  near  and  straight  into  the  dis- 
torted face  of  evil.  He  thrust  Himself  fair  into 
the  midst  of  the  sinning  world,  and  when  the 
undermined  wrecks  of  wickedness  fell,  they  fell 
on  Him.  He  received  upon  and  into  Himself 
the  weight  of  sin  ;  He  felt  the  impact  of  tempta- 
tion ;  He  knew  what  it  was  to  be  all  but  swept 
from  His  footing  by  the  rush  of  it.  By  a  tele- 
pathic sympathy  in  itself  peculiarly  godlike,  He 
knew,  without  the  stain,  the  shame  of  sin ;  He 
felt  the  strike-back  of  it  into  the  Hfe  which  it  dis- 
honours ;  He  felt  its  hopelessness  and  its  timid 
dreads.  And  it  was  out  over  the  waste  of  such 
discouragement  and  desolation  of  hearts  that  He 
threw  the  great  white  light  of  His  intrusted  mes- 
sage. He  had  much  to  reveal.  He  had  to  re- 
veal for  the  first  clear  time  among  men  the 
paradox  which  in  their  gropings  hitherto  they 
had  never  quite  discovered — that  God  hates 
sin  and  loves  the  sinner.  Even  the  noblest  of 
the  prophets  of  Israel  had  never  brought  to- 
gether the  two  halves  of  that  principle  into  per- 
fect harmony.  When  the  smoke  of  the  sacri- 
fices rose,  not  only  in  Israel  but  even  more  in  all 
pagan  lands,  the  people  thought  of  an  angry 
face-averted  Deity  over  them  who  hated  them 


144         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

because  of  their  transgressions.  Jesus  un- 
covered a  Face  that  is  never  turned  away  and 
never  clouded  with  an  unloving  thought.  He 
showed  the  Face  infinitely  pitiful  for  all  their 
wanderings  and  all  the  sorrows  which  overtook 
them  in  their  own  paths  far  from  the  Father's 
house.  He  spoke  of  forgiveness  in  accents 
which  offered  not  simply  a  gladly  granted  boon 
to  the  distressed,  but  which  seemed  to  plead 
with  men  for  a  privilege — the  privilege  of  casting 
all  their  sins  behind  the  back  of  even  Omniscient 
Knowledge  and  remembering  their  iniquities  no 
more. 

Yet  it  took  infinite  care — infinite  pains,  in  a 
very  literal  sense — to  keep  the  character  of  that 
offer  exactly  true  to  the  nature  of  God.  Jesus 
offered  forgiveness,  but  there  are  two  kinds  of 
forgiveness  in  the  world.  It  was  crucially  need- 
ful that  there  should  never  be  any  confusion  such 
that  men  might  mistake  which  sort  God  offered. 
There  is  an  easy  forgiveness  which,  too  indolent 
to  make  issue  with  sin,  wipes  out  the  score  in 
preference  to  being  annoyed  by  it,  or  too  tender 
to  rebuke  the  sinner,  glozes  over  the  offense  and 
dismisses  the  offender  to  repeat  the  same  trans- 
gression when  he  will.  This  is  the  forgiveness 
of  the  weak  and  of  the  immoral ;  it  is  a  truce 
with  sin,  not  a  conquest  of  it.  It  is  the  forgive- 
ness by  which  slothful  parents  often  sentence 
their  boys  and  girls  to  ruin  ;  it  is  forgiveness  that 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  14J; 

repeals  the  laws  of  righteousness  and  confounds 
evil  with  good.  If  God  forgave  thus,  morality 
would  disappear  from  the  world  over  night. 
But  there  is  another  forgiveness — the  forgiveness 
of  great  anguish.  This  is  the  forgiveness  by 
which  purity  and  honour  and  justice  and  love 
rescue  the  sinner  and  condemn  the  sin.  There 
is  no  compromise  in  such  forgiving ;  it  sur- 
renders nothing  to  the  powers  of  darkness ;  it 
beats  them  off  with  mighty  struggle  and  snatches 
the  soul  it  loves  from  out  their  captivity.  When 
a  man  is  forgiven  by  such  forgiveness,  he  does 
not  jauntily  imagine  that  he  is  the  half-admirable 
hero  of  a  trivial  escapade  from  which  he  has  had 
the  good  fortune  to  get  free  without  discredit. 
He  knows  that  he  has  been  redeemed  at 
"tremendous  cost  "  from  the  peril  of  a  life-and- 
death  crisis.  He  understands  that  he  has 
jeopardied  not  only  his  own  soul  but  the  soul 
that  forgave.  And  this  is  the  kind  of  pardon 
that  we  inherit  from  God — a  pardon  red  with  all 
the  fierce  bitterness  of  the  conflict  which  God 
had  fought  against  sin  from  the  hour  of  the  first 
iniquity  ;  a  pardon  bleeding  with  all  the  suffering 
which  God  suffers  when  He  beholds  us,  erring 
children  of  His  boundless  compassion,  torn  and 
distracted  and  thwarted  by  the  due  recompense 
of  our  own  ill  deeds.  It  is  pardon  given  as  from 
the  immersement  of  the  sinner's  own  despair — 
feeling  all  his  helplessness,  all  his  failure,  all  his 


146         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

loss,  all  his  pain,  and  all  that  his  aspiration  would 
be  if  from  that  depth  he  could  behold  the  glorious 
heights  of  holiness.  Truly  it  is  painful  pardon, 
but  given  gladly  for  the  sweet  sake  of  an  im- 
measurable Love. 

And  how  did  Jesus  Christ  make  sure  that  the 
world  should  not  mistake  the  quality  of  the  for- 
giveness which  He  came  to  make  known? 
How  could  He,  save  in  one  way  ?  He  suffered 
before  the  world's  sight  according  to  the  forgiv- 
ing pain  of  God.  He  died  on  Calvary.  As  He 
pushed  farther  and  farther  into  the  black  domain 
of  the  world's  wickedness,  it  accumulated  around 
Him  and  more  and  more  impeded  His  way. 
Finally  it  bodied  itself  in  human  anger,  and  rose 
and  slew  Him.  The  woe  which  sin  works  in  the 
world  concretely  and  visibly  befell  Him.  He 
died  as  a  .malefactor  died,  bearing  without  fault 
of  His  own  the  fit  penalty  of  the  faults  of  many 
others.  He  made  Himself  one  with  sinners  in 
the  most  desperate  of  their  distresses,  because 
He  submitted  Himself  to  the  deepest  of  their 
shames.  Thus  on  the  most  colossal  and  sublime 
stage  of  history  He  showed  forth  the  true 
parable  of  God  undergoing  the  weight  of  man- 
kind's wickedness.  "  Surely  He  hath  borne  our 
griefs  and  carried  our  sorrows." 

Will  any  man  now,  having  beheld  Cavalry,  ask 
to  be  forgiven  and  imagine  that  he  asks  a  light 
thing  ?    Verily  not.     Let  him  look  and  see  how 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  147 

God  sets  us  free  from  the  burden  and  hurt  of  ouf 
sin  only  by  receiving  the  burden  of  it  upon  Him- 
self. Sin  is  real  to  God ;  it  is  not  some  ugly  im- 
agination cancellable  with  a  wave  of  the  hand. 
An  eraser  will  not  end  it.  It  must  be  suffered 
out.  Somebody  must  meet  and  face  its  dire 
reality.  If  God  protects  us  from  sin's  conse- 
quences, it  is  only  by  interposing  Himself  in  our 
stead  to  meet  and  deal  with  it  in  a  more  victorious 
strength  than  our  unequal  powers  could  muster. 
He  settles  the  punitive  judgment  that  in  the 
eternal  accounts  of  righteousness  lies  against  us. 
The  moralities  of  the  divine  government  are  pre- 
served because  sin  is  not  extenuated  or  apolo- 
gized for ;  it  is  borne,  it  is  expiated.  What  divine 
love  cannot  endure  to  see  its  creatures  bear,  it 
bears  itself.  Men  go  free ;  divine  love  does  the 
penance.  Whether  Calvary  itself  was  symbol  or 
act,  this  is  the  meaning  of  it. 

The  ever-living  intercession  of  Christ  is  this 
eternal  bearing  of  the  sins  and  the  other  burdens 
of  men.  It  is  strange  that  theology  should  so 
long  have  persisted  in  seeing  in  the  intercession 
an  unending  duel  in  heaven  between  justice  and 
mercy.  There  is  no  conflict  between  justice  and 
mercy  in  heaven  or  on  earth.  Love  and  wisdom 
dominate  them  everywhere  where  God  reigns, 
and  not  only  harmonize  but  unify  them.  The 
intercession  of  Christ  is  sympathy  and  interpreta- 
tion at  the  very  centre  of  the  universe.     "All  the 


148         Beyond  the  Natural  Order 

days  of  old  "  the  Saviour  of  men  "  in  all  their 
affliction  was  afflicted,  and  the  angel  of  His  pres- 
ence saved  them,"  and  so  it  is  even  until  this  day ; 
still  He  redeems  and  bears  and  carries  them. 
By  His  own  temptation  He  knows  the  tempta- 
tions of  men  and  fortifies  them  with  His  protec- 
tion. By  His  own  weakness  in  the  flesh  He 
pities  our  frequent  frailties,  and  with  new  propi- 
tiations of  His  love  forgives  our  recurring  tres- 
passes. By  His  sorrows  He  enters  ours,  and  out 
of  hke  strengthening  as  He  received  in  the  gar- 
den, He  comforts  us.  Our  feeblest  motions  after 
good  He  eagerly  considers  and  magnifies  them  in 
His  love  and  vitalizes  them  by  His  life.  Long 
since  He  told  His  disciples  that  He  would  not 
pray  the  Father  for  them  ;  "  for  the  Father  Him- 
self loveth  you ; "  it  is  quite  inexplicable  that 
while  that  word  from  His  lips  stood  fast,  any 
should  have  depicted  the  Christ  as  standing  be- 
fore a  throne  of  wrath  to  plead  away  thunder- 
bolts of  vengeance.  But  He  did  promise  that 
where  He  went  He  would  remember  those  whom 
He  loved  on  earth,  and  He  bade  those  who  be- 
lieved in  God  to  believe  in  Him  and  not  be 
troubled.  Sure  then  we  may  be  that  where  God 
is  and  the  destinies  of  men  are  decided,  there  is 
not  only  love  for  us  but  perfect  understanding 
of  us — the  understanding  of  One  who  has  lived 
our  life  and  knows  our  trials,  our  failures,  our 
better  purposes  and  our  dearest  hopes.     We  shall 


The  Miracle  of  Jesus  149 

not  be  misjudged  in  heaven;  we  shall  not  be 
laden  with  burdens  too  heavy  for  us  to  bear ;  we 
shall  not  be  forsaken  when  our  needs  grow  keen 
and  our  strength  grows  small ;  "  He  ever  liveth 
to  make  intercession  for  us." 

There  is  only  one  deep  cleavage  through  the 
religious  thought  of  the  world.  There  are  some 
who  conceive  that  men  are  but  blind  and  unled 
"  seekers  after  God,"  groping  by  one  unmarked 
road  and  another  through  the  dark  on  the  chance 
hope  that  they  may  find  Him  here  or  there,  but 
still  unknowing  whether  they  have  come  near  to 
Him  or  not.  Others  joyfully  believe  that  God 
has  reached  down  to  find  men,  cleared  a  path  for 
them  and  bidden  them  come  up  to  Him, — more 
than  all,  has  sent  a  Guide  to  lend  them  a  hand 
of  help  on  the  upward  way.  Among  those  to 
whom  the  latter  faith  is  real,  there  may  be  many 
divergences  which  measure  wide  in  the  surveys 
of  the  schools,  but  from  overhead  the  severance 
must  appear  shallow  and  insignificant.  Only 
grant  us  a  Father  to  love  us  and  a  Brother  to 
lead  us,  and  we  shall  not  miss  the  way. 


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Date  Due 


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